Workforce Management Featured Article
Average Handle Time Isn't the Most Important Metric, but Don't Discard It Completely
The last few years have been pivotal for contact center business. Thanks to new technology innovations and new customer behavior (better, faster and easier!), many contact centers have had to alter the way they do business. Keeping calls short, once the ultimate goal of any call center, has had to move over in favor of metrics like first-call resolution, customer satisfaction, net promoter scores and customer engagement.
While it’s absolutely true that quality is far more important than quantity when it comes to customer service, this doesn’t mean it’s in a company’s best interest to throw average handle time to the wind and encourage agents to keep customers on the phone as long as possible. As long as quality goals and FRC are satisfied, keeping calls brief can allow agents to take more calls per day and save the organization money.
Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software, recently provided some tips for keeping calls as short as possible without sacrificing quality.
Ensure agents have all the info they require. Going into a call “blind” means the agent will need to take time to gather information, at the same time irritating the customer. Be sure that your contact center solution is properly integrated with databases and can “pop” all necessary info in an easy to read format for agents before they even finish their greeting to the customer.
Boost listening skills. Too often, agents are too busy planning what they will say next to really listen to the customer, which means the customer has to repeat herself. This is annoying for everyone involved and really wastes time. Next time you put your agents through the training or re-training paces, be sure to include a module on listening skills.
Teach agents to limit small talk. Some customers are brief, but many enjoy a good “chat” with a call center agent during the course of the call. While it’s critical to be polite, help agents understand the importance of steering the customer to the crux of the call once initial pleasantries are finished.
Skills-based routing. Nothing slows a call down faster than routing it to an agent poorly equipped to handle the call. Skills-based routing exists for this reason: to deliver the call to the best possible agent to handle it. By beefing up routing, companies can cut seconds off of each call. If there are any outside resources agents may need to tap, ensure that agents have fast and easy access to those resources (via internal messaging, for example).
Rewards and incentives. These can help agents keep in mind that while quality should be the first order of the day, brevity is also valued. Just be sure that agents aren’t cutting calls short before the issues are resolved just so they can get their pictures on the wall as employees of the month.
So while average handle time isn’t the metric that companies should view as their most critical goal, it’s still important to find procedural ways to shave precious minutes off calls. By doing it right, you can actually improve the quality of customer care while at the same time saving money.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi