Average Handle Time: Should We Still be Focusing on It?

When we talk about delivering a great customer service, we tend to always talk about response times. And it’s true that customers expect faster responses than ever. But they also want fast resolutions and shorter wait times. Whilst all those things can be measured individually, average handle time (AHT) captures it into one metric. It measures the average duration of an interaction, from the initial point of contact, through to the wrap up and closing of the interaction. In its essence, AHT is a business-focused metric that really measures the productivity of your workforce and, in the past, productivity was king over the service being provided. So, is AHT an outdated metric? I’d argue no — if you use it correctly, it can also be used to measure the experience you’re providing.

Pushing too hard on AHT as a KPI means that your operators may also rush their interactions, they may be less motivated to help complicated queries, and may only provide half-resolutions. And that means your customer experience takes a hit. And a good customer experience is essential to customer satisfaction. According to Gladly’s 2018 Customer Service Expectations Survey, 59% of customers said being treated as an individual was more important than how fast the issue was resolved (53%). So, should we be using AHT at all?

Let’s take a step back to productivity; AHT is still a fantastic tool for measuring it. When you’re measuring AHT — and incentivising your staff to lower it — operators are encouraged to handle each interaction as efficiently as possible. The by-product of that is that they can handle more customers and their interactions per hour go up. And we all know that that equals cost savings.

As for customer experience, lowering your AHT means your wait times will be lower and that’s important when you consider that 34% of consumers say their biggest pain point is long hold times. A lower AHT means you’ll have fewer customers becoming frustrated that they’re having to wait for a response. So that’s an instant win for AHT. And if you measure AHT, but stress the importance of a good experience over a fast resolution, your operators won’t feel pressured into handling each interaction as quickly as possible. They’ll be able to take more time to handle more complicated queries and can provide an amazing experience. But how do you achieve that middle ground? The answer lies in automating.

Asking your operators to be as efficient as possible, and to focus on providing a great service, creates conflictions which don’t always play out well. We’ve found that by making the software efficient, the operator only ever has to consider making the experience of the customer fantastic — working alongside automation tools makes the handle time lower than an operator ever could by themselves.

So what tools can you use? The most obvious one is chatbots. Even a simple chatbot can answer initial queries and gather data. Since chatbots can answer instantaneously, the handle time for their part of the interaction is only slowed down by how quickly the customer can respond. That can shave valuable seconds off your AHT. And it also means that when a human agent picks up the interaction, all the legwork has been done for them. So, the bot can gather important information (such as account numbers or order numbers) and that information can be passed on to the operator. So now the operator can offer a quick update and immediately get to work on resolving the issue. That can take minutes off your AHT.

And chatbots are just the most obvious piece of automation. There are numerous ways you can speed up the process. For example, if you implement interaction prioritisation and routing, you know that every interaction will go to an available operator. You can decide how many interactions an operator should have at any one time and, therefore, make sure that no customer is waiting in a queue for too long. Not only does that mean your whole operation is more efficient, it also means customers are generally more satisfied.

Another example is using canned responses. Whilst canned responses can sometimes be a bit infamous, at Gnatta we’ve introduced what we call Content Responses. We make sure that every response is tailored to the exact situation, is configurable by the company, and is editable in the moment. So, our Content feature means that our pre-written replies always feel natural, unique, and on-brand. And being able to click and send a common reply during wrap-up, rather than writing the entire thing out, cuts down on your AHT even more.

When it comes to lowering your AHT, all the little things add up. By using the automation tools in Gnatta, one of our clients was able to increase their productivity by 40% and save £26,000 a year. And these kinds of savings will ultimately increase as AI becomes more complex. Right now, we don’t use AI in customer service that much simply because it isn’t developed enough. We especially can’t trust it to handle more complicated or emotional interactions. Currently, AI can’t reproduce empathy or process the emotions of customers. But it’s being developed. And once AI is developed enough, it could conceivably handle every part of an interaction, meaning AHT will drop even further and customers will expect it to be even shorter.

But does that mean human agents are on the way out? Well, maybe eventually. But not any time soon. In the next few years, we may see automation and AI take over more parts of the customer journey but it’s unlikely that humans will be completely removed from the equation. That’s especially true since, even though customers don’t mind dealing with a robot, they also still want the option to talk to a human when they feel it’s necessary.

But what does that mean for AHT? It’s possible that the metric will slowly begin to fall out of popularity. Currently, AHT has a bit of a bad name — a quick internet search will bring up numerous articles denouncing the use of AHT, claiming that focusing on it harms the experience you’re offering. So as the possibility of lowering AHT with automation increases, perhaps the want to measure it will decrease. But, as we’ve seen above, it is possible to measure AHT and still improve your customer satisfaction. And, from our own work with clients, we have consistently seen that customers want the best of both worlds — a great experience and a fast resolution. With the rise of the digital-focused world and generations who are being raised on the internet, it seems unlikely that those expectations will change any time soon. If you’d like to know more about automation and how to implement it, take a look at our whitepaper here.