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Definition and examples of what AHT, or Average Handle Time, means to contact centers.
Calabrio Shorts is a fun-sized podcast that covers all sorts of topics around the contact center industry. No topic is off-limits as we cover frequently asked questions, industry trends and definitions, and yes, we will have fun doing it.
00;00;01;16 - 00;00;32;20
Speaker 1
Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of Calabrio Shorts. My name is Dave Hoekstra, Calabrio Product Evangelist. And today we are talking about AHT,one of our favorite acronyms for contact centere day to day reporting. So what is AHT? AHT stands for average handle time or average handling time and is typically a measure of the amount of time it takes for our agents to speak to our customers and work on their incoming interaction.
00;00;32;28 - 00;01;00;18
Speaker 1
And it's an important distinction because AHT is actually a combination of several different factors within an organization's call time. So average handle time usually consists of what we call talk time. And that's the amount of time that the agent actually is speaking to the customer average hold time, which is the time that the agent puts the customer on hold to research Not to be confused with queue time.
00;01;00;29 - 00;01;24;07
Speaker 1
Queue time is the amount of time that the customer waits to be answered. And that is typically not hold time even though we use the term hold to say the customer is on hold waiting to be answered. We're usually talking about what we call queue time at that point. And the final key to handle time is after call work time or wrap up time.
00;01;24;07 - 00;01;51;07
Speaker 1
You may hear both of those phrases from time to time. So what we have when we talk about AHT is a combination of talk time, hold time and wrap up time. Sometimes there are other little tiny other things that might be included in that, such as ring time or it depends, but those are usually fairly insignificant. Handling time can also refer to non voice channels as well.
00;01;51;08 - 00;02;22;01
Speaker 1
Things like chat and email. We might also refer to that. So from a general perspective, AHT is usually talking about the length of time that the customer is engaged with the agent, and then also adding in the amount of time that the agent is engaged in that particular interaction, which is why we typically include after call work. There's no rules that say you have to include one or the other, but that is from a standpoint of what most contact centers do.
00;02;22;12 - 00;02;45;17
Speaker 1
That's how it's measured is talk plus hold plus wrap AHT is often looked at at the end of a day or at the end of an interval. And remember, the A in HD stands for average. So we're not talking about one individual call. We're either looking at it from a skill or queue perspective in, for example, what was the average handling time of every call that came in today?
00;02;46;12 - 00;03;07;25
Speaker 1
On my English skill, for example, or you could also be looking at it from an agent's perspective, what is an agent's average handling time? So of all the calls that that agent took today, on average, how long did it take them to engage with our customer? Sometimes you can mix the two. What was this particular agent's handling time on all English calls.
00;03;08;11 - 00;03;33;27
Speaker 1
Most of our ACD partners that provide this reporting information can give us pretty good detailed information on what this is. So AHT is a pretty standard measurement that looks at how long it takes us to actually manage through our interaction for the day. Some of the other more common ones, which we'll do our full episode on, are average speed of answer and service level.
00;03;34;10 - 00;03;49;00
Speaker 1
But when we look at AHT that is in general what we're looking at. So as always, if you have questions, thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to let us know. Info at Calabrio dot com. My name is Dave Hoekstra and we'll see you on the next episode of Calabrio Shorts.