AHT (Average Handling Time) has long been an important tool for contact centres to measure the handling time for the task, the case type and the individual, but has the metric had its day?
If you use AHT i.e. Average handling time as the main KPI for measuring and evaluating your customer contacts rarely provides a complete picture of the customer experience. In addition to customer satisfaction risking being negatively affected if the contact feels rushed, it often leads to lower efficiency for the entire customer journey because the customer needs to make repeated contacts.
Instead, AHT should be used as a tool to detect problems. If handling time increases or if the average trend starts to deviate, upwards or downwards, you need to understand the reason behind it. Is more training needed? Or is it a certain type of incident that your employees do not know how to handle? The advantage of analysing the trends is that you can do something about them and improve both your employees' conditions and the customer experience.
AHT is therefore still an important KPI, but in order for the KPI to do itself justice, it should not be used in isolation, but together with other KPIs in order for you to get a complete picture of what the status is at your specific contact centre.