Call Centres perform a variety of tasks ranging from providing expert support on IT and finance to outbound sales. For many contact centres a key measure of success lies in the amount of calls an agents makes or answers. It is for this reason that many call centres monitor an agents AHT as a measure of the productivity of staff. However, as experienced call centre managers know, this focus on AHT could be detrimental to the quality of services provided by the contact centre. Many call centres operate on a 0845 number which means that the customer is being billed for the call and in those instances AHT is a useful measure to monitor as the quicker the service is provided the less the customer pays. The biggest problem however is that not all customer enquiries are quickly resolved and in those instances where a contact centre places too much emphasis on AHT we can see a sharp decline in the service provided.
AHT assumes correctly that most customer want to be processed as quickly as possible; however there are many situations within a call centre whereby through either ethnicity, age, disability, or the complex nature of the customer’s circumstances, a customer requires the agent to take their time. It is in these situations, strict imposition of an AHT target damages the quality of service, as agents try to rush through a call in an attempt to adhere to AHT. It is important to differentiate between situations where the age of the customer suggests they might be better dealt with face to face and to provide an alternative method of resolving their enquiry (see are article on the internet), however this is not always best practice for every contact centre. An AHT target should not pressure the agent into simply fobbing of a client onto an alternative support network. Where possible, as a matter or service quality, the AHT target should be given leniency and especially where it is clear an agent is dealing with a difficult client in order to ensure service quality is kept.
Poor imposition of an AHT target also causes agents to develop bad habits on the phone. While a company can provide superb training programmes focusing on customer service quality, these can easily be disregarded when agents go live through focusing on a strict AHT target. As we mentioned before, a tight AHT target might force agent to cherry pick problems, ignoring vulnerable customers and choosing the ones that they know can be processed quickly. Too much emphasis on AHT also encourages bad practice such as cutting calls early and encouraging unnecessary transfers; to make matter worst heavy focus on AHT also has a tendency to cause agents to miss vital checks before performing actions on a customer’s account. The biggest problem here is that often these little problems causes more work for the call centre to handle while in the short term on paper the call centre seems to be doing well hitting all AHT targets and backing up its value to its client; in the long run the small scale errors caused by AHT pressure causes customers to call back more often and therefore does not really contribute to the effectiveness of the call centre. To make matter worse, there is no guarantee that a customer will receive the same agent which may leave the customer having to explain their issues again with their problems still unresolved. This obviously reflects very badly on your company’s image and contributes to a negative customer experience.
All organisations will have their own industry specific issues caused by over adherence to AHT. In the Financial Services sector, where a call centre is acting under the Data Protection Act 1998, processes like ID and A (Identity and Authorization) are vital to ensure the financial security of both customers and the business itself. Pressure on AHT is very likely to cause agents to miss out on telling signs of fraud and therefore fail to act on their suspicions and inform the correct authority within their organisations.
We have mentioned before the high attrition rate suffered by contact centres (see here). One of the key factors in reducing such stress in staff members is to ease off on the AHT target allowing staff to work at their own pace and naturally relieving some of the stress caused by AHT. Contact centre agents are mostly required to sound positive on calls when talking to customers. By alleviating some of the stress caused by AHT, managers will likely improve the manner in which the agents interact with customers. While this may sound unlikely initially, it is an association that can easily be tested as agents are monitored continuously via the contact centre platform. By keeping vigilant managers can ensure quality and service standards are reached whilst agents utilise a more pleasant working environment and abuses are prevented.
Does this mean there is no point in monitoring AHT? No, of course not, AHT represents one of the best ways to benchmark agent performance and a great indicator of call load at various times. It’s simplicity and accuracy ensures that it is an effective way to monitor the performance of a call centre. It is a key metric to consider for resourcing and workforce management that impacts directly on the profitability of a call centre. Quality measurements are also vital to ensure the result of each call and that the customers query was resolved satisfactorily; with the advent of cheaper storage and faster broadband storing reviewing the information required to evaluate call quality can now be easily achieved.