I can hear the recording now. You planted a bug in the board room of a major U.S. Corporation. The new reports on average handle time (AHT) are just in and the Board of Directors are all congratulating themselves on efficiency and productivity. But in fact what they are doing is congratulating themselves on an early bankruptcy for their business.
It would seem that the Board of Directors have been sucked into the same misbelief that the key is productivity and effienecy in their call center is to have the lowest average time on the phone for their customer service and tech support representatives. No one can argue that less time on the phone equals fewer representatives and a lower payroll.
Unfortunately, many simply see the AHT reports as the ultimate measurement and take whatever action they can to reduce the numbers. If the report looks good then one must assume that all is well in the call center and with your customers.
Operating your business in this manner probably means that as you better your AHT numbers, the level of customer frustration and representative stress increase porportionally. This will eventually lead to a decrease in your bottom line. By all means look at your AHT reports, but don't forget the big picture.
I would suggest that before the Average Handle Time figures become at all important you must first determine if your customers are getting the support they need and deserve. The first step I believe is to classify all your customers and/or callers. Once they are classified they can be routed to an appropriate representative.
You might do the classification during a call, or have a customer pre-classified in your database. Let's look a tech support situation. Your callers may range from someone who is thinking about making a purchase to one that has already made a purchase. The needs of those callers are so vastly different I can't imagine training one representative to offer great service to both.
For your customers of a high tech product, you'll find that some don't even know you need to plug their computer into the electrical mains, much less how to turn it on all they way through those that are designers of rockets and super computers. The needs of these customers are considerably different!
When they are lumped together, you end up with extreme frustration because the customer is way behind or ahead of the representative. Now, if they were classified on technical ability and routed to an agent with training suitable for the customers technical ability several things may well happen. Most importantly, customer satisfaction will increase significant. Average Handle Time will probably go down as well.
Hopefully, your AHT reports would show which classification of customers are taking the most time so you could review where your business is failing these customers before they call. Maybe your documentation, website or other element could be revised to eliminate the need for the call in the first place.
Some call center structures are completely ignorant. For example, you call your credit card company and are asked to key in your credit card number and zip code. Once you get the agent, you're asked for the same information again!
A waste of time and customer frustration. I can imagine the stress your representatives suffer constantly hearing, "I already keyed in my number, why the f--k do you need it again?". Needless to say, this keeps your AHT numbers high and your agents are further stressed because mangement is putting pressure on them to go faster in a flawed system. In effect the agent is blamed for the flawed system!
Another place that the credit card system is completely flawed with respect to offering customer service and satisfaction is when you call to talk to an agent. I find that I am always offered a barrage of options that allow me to do everything I do (and just did) online, except talk to someone.
Wouldn't it be brilliant and really easy if the system simply check if someone had logged into their internet account within the past X days and if so, direct them immediately to an agent and not touch tone hell? You can be pretty such that someone who has just reviewed their account online is not planning to retrieve the same information via telephone!
The bottom line is that if you want to do what's best for you bottom line, shred your AHT reports for at least a year. With all the time you save from not preparing and reviewing your Average Handle Time reports you can take a good look at your overall system and make intelligent changes to it that result in immediate employee and customer satisfaction.
