More and more contact center leaders are ditching average handle time (AHT) requirements. Here’s why you might want to do it, too.
Many feel that handle time is hurting call quality and overall customer satisfaction. So they’re considering dropping the measurement altogether, according to research by customer service expert Barbara Burke.
Here are the top five reasons contact center leaders gave when asked, “If your center decided to remove AHT from your agents’ scorecard, please tell us why you made the decision.” (Leaders could choose more than one answer.)
- Call quality scores were impacted (67%)
- Monitored calls revealed customer issues that could/should have been handled in one call were not (67%)
- First call resolution rates were being impacted (50%)
- Employee morale was being impacted (44%)
- Causing agents too much stress (44%)
So leaders are most concerned about the health of customer relationships and the health of agent morale and mentality – valid reasons for pulling the measurement.
Pulling AHT as a measurement may not be the right thing for every contact center. But it might be a good idea to lower its importance below customer satisfaction and call quality on the scale.
