OPERATIONAL INDICATORS – AVERAGE HANDLE TIME (AHT)

Have you ever wondered what is behind any of the Contact Center operational indicators? Why do we measure what we measure and what do they mean? In this article, we tackle one of the most important indicators; Average Handle Time (AHT)
AHT is defined as the total amount of time (on average) that an agent spends on a contact. In a Contact Center environment (voice, chat), AHT includes talk time, hold time and after call work time (ACW). As the name indicates, it is the historical average for thousands, perhaps millions of calls handled by the Center over a reasonable period of time. Although AHT can also be applied to non-immediate contact types (email, fax, and regular mail), it does not have the same importance as we typically use contact per hours as a key metric.