emphasis on reducing AHT so agents can take more calls and contact centers reducing costs. There are several issues and
Optimal Handle Time? Handle Time from the Customer’s Point of View By Neil Crane, Director of Product Strategy, Cicero Inc. Average Handle Time (AHT) is one of the most commonly used metrics in today’s contact center. Most people define it as a combination of talk, email, and chat plus wrap-up and hold time. Some managers take an average of AHT over a period of time and if possible, they further break down the metric by call type, reason, etc. There has been much discussion about AHT over the past year, especially with the emphasis on reducing AHT so agents can take more calls and contact centers reducing costs. There are several issues and dangers of focusing too much on AHT that have been well documented: the impacts on the agent and their work satisfaction and on customer satisfaction and overall loyalty. In one of Contact Babel’s most recent reports, “The US Contact Center Decision-Makers’ Guide 20092010,” they note that their “Respondents’ agents spend an average of just under 60% of their time on calls, with around 15% of time spent on wrap-up, 11% on administration and 15% on idle time." That’s nearly 40% of an agent’s time not conversing with customers but doing these other tasks. Of course, much of this wasted time could be eliminated through automation of processes such as eliminating copying and pasting, searching for customer information, and many other common redundant tasks. While other improvements such as presenting customer information in a single view and providing agent guidance at the desktop could further reduce this wasted time. An alternative to measuring AHT and attempting to reduce waste is to measure and manage Optimal Handle Time (OHT). OHT is simply the ideal amount of time it should take based on the customers’ perspective and use of best practices including: •
The average cost of each interaction
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The revenue generated, kept per interaction
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The cost avoided per interaction (compliance, rework, etc.)
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The customer experience top box or net promotion lift per interaction
If companies can get a baseline OHT and manage it successfully, it shouldn’t matter if an agent spends another 30-seconds or even a couple of extra minutes cross or up selling another service or product. This applies from the customers experience too. If an agent resolves the original issue and is able to share a promotional offer that benefits the customer, then you’re more likely to have that customer walk away from that experience not only satisfied but also more loyal to your company’s brand. The trick to all of this is how to measure OHT. Much of this can be done using your existing metric data including call times, customer satisfaction surveys, etc. The key is to understand what your customers are experiencing, identify areas for improvement, and build your service in providing the optimal service interaction, each and every time. This may include cross/up selling, sending email verification, or even providing additional communication channels such as chat. You can also use technology to better
measure each interaction and overall OHT. Technology is not only helping companies measure process time but also: •
Helping to identify bottlenecks, opportunities for process time improvement relative to the interaction and FCR
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Providing analytics or feeding best of breed BI/Analytics solutions to deliver an optimized user workflow, script, composite view to the contact center floor within hours or days.
We will continue to share what we learn, best practices and our thoughts on shaping the customer experience such as moving from AHT to OHT.
Neil Crane is Director of Product Strategy at Cicero Inc. Neil has more than 20 years’ experience applying integration technology to business problems, focusing most recently on the contact center and specifically the customer experience. Cicero Inc., founded in 1988, provides solutions that enable business transformation of enterprise interactions across companies and government organizations. Cicero XM technology delivers this capability via an innovative combination of desktop integration, automation, presentation and analytics capabilities, built to transform customer interaction into the most powerful marketing and branding asset a company can own . For more information contact
[email protected] or go to www.ciceroinc.com .
