Calculating Average Speed to Answer (ASA) involves identifying the best way to measure the speed of answering incoming calls. The goal of ASA is to answer calls quickly and efficiently while meeting customer expectations. Speed is key to success in many areas of business. Unfortunately, it is often more complicated than measuring how long it takes for customers to wait for someone to pick up the phone.
In a perfect world, customers would only call your call center if everything was going smoothly. But that’s not how the world works, and there is always a reason why people call in the first place.
Therefore, the average speed of an answer is meant to measure how long it takes for an incoming call to get answered by someone (agent or IVR). The ASA metric is measured in seconds, and it’s calculated as the average time calls spend waiting in the queue before they are answered.
The ASA is a powerful metric to improve your customer experience and make sure your customers are happy. The shorter a customer has to wait before their call gets answered, the better their experience. If a customer has a good experience with your brand, they’re more likely to continue doing business.
But what about those customers who have to wait for longer than usual? How does this impact their experience? This article will dive into the critical metrics of a contact center like average speed to answer, handling time, first call resolution, quality assurance, and more.
Average Speed to Answer
There are many contact center metrics that you can use to measure agent performance. One of them is the average speed of answer (ASA). The average rate of answer (ASA) is a contact center metric that measures the average time for an agent to answer the phone. Traditionally, this metric has been used to measure performance and compare agents against one another. It’s also been used as a benchmarking tool to gauge how well a contact center compares against others.
While ASA is a good tool for understanding how quickly you answer calls and thus how well you are meeting customer expectations, it’s not always the best tool for managing agent performance. For example, ASA only considers how long it takes for an agent to answer the phone. It doesn’t feel any factors outside of an agent’s control.
For example, suppose your company experiences a surge in call volume because of high demand for your product or service. In that case, it may take significantly longer for an agent to answer the phone than usual. This increased hold time will mean that agents answer calls more slowly than expected. But this increase may have nothing to do with agent performance–it may simply be due to circumstances. Using ASA would cause inaccurate performance data and unnecessary criticism of your agents, damaging morale and higher turnover rates.
Do not mistake ASA with service level agreements (SLAs). Service level agreements answer this question: “How many calls are s answered within X seconds?” Likewise, the average speed answers this question: “How long did all calls wait before answering?”
The average speed of an answer is a crucial metric in call center management, and it is usually measured in seconds. It reveals how responsive your customer service team is, and you can also use it to measure things like your agents’ performance or whether you need more hires. To calculate the ASA metric, you need to add up the total time spent by all calls answered by agents in a certain period, dividing that total number by the number of responded to calls during that same period.
Understanding First Call Resolution
When it comes to understanding this essential call center measurement, it’s simple!
First Call Resolution is a call center industry term that measures how well a call center handles customer inquiries on the first try. It refers to the percentage of calls resolved in the caller’s initial contact with the support line. It is considered one of the most critical metrics for measuring customer satisfaction because it gives an idea of how effective the support line is at solving problems for the caller.
There are many ways to define First Call Resolution. One method is to look at those calls that have been fully resolved without having to transfer or escalate to another agent or department. Another might be to look at those calls in which all issues have been resolved – either on the first call or through subsequent follow-ups and additional contacts – without involving more than one agent.
First Call Resolution does not necessarily mean that every aspect of a problem has been entirely resolved. For example, a call might be considered resolved if the caller’s immediate need has been met, but further work may be needed at some point in the future.
Another example, a customer may call with a billing issue that requires account information; even if this issue cannot be resolved immediately and needs to be escalated or transferred, it can still be counted as determined if the problem is taken care of before any further calls are made.
First Call Resolution is usually an excellent indication of customer service quality. The longer a customer has to deal with an issue and the more calls they have to make, the less satisfied they will be. If you can take care of your customers right away on their first request, you’re sure to keep them happy for much longer.
Handling Time
Handling time is the amount of time for an agent, on average, to assist your caller from pickup to hangup. This is sometimes referred to as call duration. Average handling time should be a primary goal for your call center because you want to spend as little time on the phone with each caller as possible.
This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s true. If you spend very little time with each caller, your service reps are efficient, and you have more capacity for additional call volume, which indicates growth and success.
Average Handling Time (AHT) is calculated by taking the actual talk, hold, and wrap-up time per agent, divided by the number of calls answered. The sum of these times divided by the number of calls answered provides you with the average handling time per call.
Reducing AHT has several precious benefits, including:
Reduce Customer Frustration.
Customers don’t like waiting on hold for a long time. Statistics show that almost half of customers will hang up after waiting for just one minute. Reducing AHT also helps reduce caller impatience and frustration during transfers and other delays.
High First Call Resolution
A customer who is helped on the first contact has a much better customer experience than a customer who must call several times before resolving their issue.
Increased Agent Productivity
Agents have more time to serve other customers and take more calls per hour, increasing your revenue per agent hour.
Quality Assurance
Most customer service reps in a contact center or call center face similar challenges every day. They have to deal with any queries, concerns, and customer complaints, many of which are difficult to resolve. At the same time, they have to deal with monitoring systems that record the number of calls they take and the length of time they spend on each call.
Customer service reps have a tough job. You must provide them with the right tools and resources to handle difficult calls successfully and professionally. This means training them to handle various customer issues and teaching them techniques for handling conflict and angry customers. Quality assurance is a powerful tool for improving customer service. However, it can seem scary if you’ve never done it before. You don’t want to feel like you’re spying on your employees or criticizing them.
But it’s not like that. Quality assurance is just a way of getting feedback on how your customer service processes are working. Think of it as customer research, but much more specific and personal. Rather than give you broad statistics about how many customers are satisfied with your customer service, quality assurance will tell you which particular problems customers have and which employees have the most trouble helping them. That makes it possible to improve the customer experience in concrete ways and train your employees more effectively to handle customers’ needs better in the future.
One of the best ways to get started with quality assurance is to shadow one of your best employees for a day and compare notes at the end of the day about what she did well and what could be improved. Having a process like this gives you an objective basis for talking about issues with customer service, which makes it easier for both managers and employees to address problems without feeling defensive or criticized.
