We will look at the factors that decrease or increase AHT in a positive and negative way.

First, let's go through the list once and then we will get into more detail on each item below.
1.

Employee Training.

2.

Customer greetings, both automated and spoken

3.

Information Systems

4.

Telephone Systems and ACDs

5.

IVRs & Auto Attendants

6.

Service Level

7.

Business Processes

8.

Call Control

9.

Call types

10.

Staff Experience

11.

Customer self-help

1. Training is the first and probably most important topic in our discussion. Good relative and applicable agent training
will pay for itself many times over. The best trained agents, answer customers calls correctly. Well trained agents
take less time to understand the customers issue (because they have been trained to understand), thus their AHT is
usually much lower.
Trained agents are more satisfied with their jobs and thus have lower staff turnover.

2. Customer Greetings are a factor in AHT. Have you noticed that the opening and closing greetings imposed on Call
Center Agents are getting longer and longer?
I dare you to find a customer who likes all those extra words.
No one really wants to be asked how they are doing today. Why, because the Agent asking that question probably
does not really care and the customer knows it is not said or meant in genuine way.
If you require your staff to say a specific greeting at the beginning of a call then realize that the greeting is adding
seconds to every agents AHT.
Try this greeting: Thank you for being our customer, how can I help you?

3. Systems (desk top computers, networks, databases, etc) factor into AHT. If the system response times are slow
then a call, email or Chat conversation will take longer to process. If agents have to wait for the computer screen to
refresh then those are extra seconds that add up to unnecessary and wasted minutes and hours and that time is
added to the AHT of each agent.
If slow system response an issue in your call center? Here is how you can check. Simply take some time during the
busiest hour of your operation and watch several of your agents working. Concentrate on the screen (not the agent)
and see how fast it responds. Also count how many different screens or systems they have to access to complete the
call.
I'll bet you will come back with time savings suggestions and a better appreciation for the importance of fast system
response.

6. Low Service Level or put another way lots of customers waiting on hold, means call after call for your agents. If
your Agents do not get a decent break between calls then they will get worn down and AHT will rise. A couple of
issues come into play here. First of all, the longer customers wait the more they complain. Complaining takes time. If
the customer does not complain then the agent will likely apologize for the wait time. Either way all this activity takes
time and it thus AHT goes up.
Another interesting thing happens. Agents will talk longer to happier customers to avoid the risk of getting an irate
customer who has been waiting on hold.
Poor service level drives up AHT.

8. Your Agents ability to control their Customers conversation is very important to lower AHT.
Customers will be mad, upset, confused or disgruntled. So they will want to explain their situation in great detail or
they will want to talk about the weather, or their grand-kids, where your agent is located or Sundays football game.
The goal of call control is to ensure your agent gets the customer back to the reason for their call. Call control is a
technique and a skill that ensures the Agent identifies and fixes the customers issue in the shortest time possible.
Call Control is a skill that needs to be taught and practiced.
Payback is immediate and significant.

10. The experience of your staff is a factor in AHT. I always remember when I started managing a call center for a
wireless company in Toronto, I had one agent who sat in the back corner and never talked to anyone. What as funny
was that he was the agent who received the most compliments from our customers. He learned what he had to do,
how to do it, and then just set about getting his work done. His customers loved him because he was fast, efficient
and kept talk to a minimum. His AHT was always the best.
What I remember the most was that Paul was the fastest typist I had ever seen. Again he took the time to learn how
to type on a keyboard with both hands and all 10 fingers. The system was fast but Paul was much faster.
You simply cant beat an experienced agent.

1.

Gather all information at the start of the call

We encourage agents to gather as much information as possible at the start of the call.
This should be relevant and about the situation, in order to best resolve the issue
instead of getting information filtering throughout the call.
3.

Be there for your team

Be there to answer your team. If you can save them from searching through an online
resource you will save them time. Be accountable for them.
4.

Let agents listen to examples of low AHT

Allow agents with a high AHT to listen to calls of their colleagues with a low AHT to
identify where they can reduce their own AHT.
5.

Recruit agents who speak concisely

During the recruitment process, identify candidates who naturally speak, ask questions
and give answer concisely.
6.

Identify silence on calls

1.Identify calls with a lot of silence
2.Train agents who generate silence
3.Reduce AHT and increase FCR & CSAT

7.

Identify silent times

Identify silent times and look at what is happening. Is the member of staff updating the
system, is the system responding?
8.

Buddy-up agents

Buddy-up agents with high AHT with agents that have low AHT to listen in, gain tips and
share ideas.
Quality control is obviously important, so ensure that you have calibration between
agents with low and high AHTs.
9.

Avoid buddying with bad agents

Avoid agents buddying with older or bad agents as they pick up bad habits.
10.

Use call and screen recording

Call and screen recording tools are very effective when coaching towards a lower
average handling time.
11.

Team champions

Have team champions for each call driver who can then disseminate key points to the
rest of the team.
12.

Get the basics right on the call

Ensure people follow a predefined call structure. People need to listen; question; clarify
back; use hold; give overviews and deliver the solution effectively.
Focus needs to be on giving the right answer, first time.
Adapt, be friendly, helpful and enthusiastic
13.

Make sure agents have the right knowledge

Professionalise the workforce in their business area. The more knowledge agents have
of their whole business, the easier it is to answer customer questions and reduce time
to get the correct answer.
15.

The habits of highly effective agents

Examine what your top 10 agents do in regard to AHT that makes them consistently
quick. Then apply these tips to the slowest 10. Improving the slowest agents AHT will
have the biggest gains.
19.

Promote the website and text alerts

Promote website and text alerts for service disruption.

21.

Involve staff and supervisors in creating training materials

Staff should be involved in the training, along with supervisors to refresh themselves at
the same time.
24.

Dont send out updates by email

Hold sessions for providing information direct to advisors, rather than using email.
Make sure this is a two-way session, rather than managers telling advisors what to do.
Empower the agent.
25.

Create friendlier forms

Create more user-friendly service request forms for every scenario with a specific
service. This gives a more consistent approach for the customer.
27.

Process all information on the call

Encourage agents to process information whilst the customer is talking

After-call work (ACW) should be replaced with admin time, where advisors log the main
points of the call and then they are given admin time to process all the calls they have
taken. NO more ACW!
28.

Make your knowledge base searchable

Put a search engine on the knowledge database. It will make it much easier to find
information.
31.

Produce a set of troubleshooting questions

Design a structured question/flow for the agents so they have a set of questions to ask
the users and troubleshoot accordingly, rather than coming out with their own set of
questions.
32.

Share agent best practice

Encourage your top agents with the best call control to share their
experiences/strategies with colleagues in team briefings. Its more powerful than coming
from a team leader or manager as they can see it really works.
33.

Agent self-reviews

We think self-reviews are crucial in reduction of AHT this encourages the agent to
identify the problem and provide the solution.
34.

Put information at the agents fingertips

I ensure that the agents have the information at their fingertips and use the internal chat
feature so that they can get information from other agents where necessary.
What I find is that agents do not have time to do a lot of reading, so really the most
effective way is to probably split the team and bring them into a sit-down setting where
the interpretation will remain the same.
35.

Keep the customer in the loop

If it is absolutely necessary to go silent when processing things, advisors should keep

the customer in the loop, e.g. Sorry to keep you waiting, Im just updating the
account. That way the customer doesnt feel the need to fill the silence with
conversations that can ultimately prolong the call and distract the advisor.
41.

Dont scrimp on induction training

Invest in your staffs technical knowledge, rather than rushing them through a short
induction. Invest in educating staff over a period of time, teaching them background

information. This should remove the need for referrals to team leaders and help the staff
member take ownership of their customers needs.
43.

Let agents listen to recorded calls

Agents should feel the support by listening to recorded calls. If you coach them after
listening, this has the added benefit that they will learn from their mistakes.
45.

Mini briefing sessions

Conduct mini briefing sessions in small managing groups to update on changes in

service
47.

Dont confuse quality with efficiency

Never jeopardise call quality for AHT as you will not only provide bad service but also
encourage bad behaviour in the advisor population.
46.

Create a good opening question

My tip for reducing the AHT is to create a good opening question to have control of the
conversation directly from the start. An example could be: Good day, my name
is..did you call us before? Whether this is answered with a yes or no, you can take
control over the conversation.

tips for motivating staff

1. Happy work force = happy customers
Provide a great environment to work in and look after your staff the way you expect
them to look after your customers.
Why should they be nice to customers if they are getting a raw deal at work
themselves? Keep them happy by providing what they need in terms of training (soft
skills as well as technical knowledge) and genuine support with positive messages
where appropriate and constructive feedback where development is needed.

2. Senior manager feedback

You dont need to spend a lot of money to make your people

feel motivated and valued. Quite often a telephone call from a senior manager
congratulating a team member on a good week is equally as effective as an offer of a
training course or gift voucher. You cant be seen to be withdrawing from investing in
your people. Of course, you may have to make decisions to protect the profitability of
your business that may not be popular so the messages you communicate are
extremely important. We must continue to celebrate success, coach people on specific
challenges and address any difficult issues they face.

3. A positive attitude
It is vital that recruitment team managers realign their expectations and take into
consideration the economic climate when setting targets and objectives. Whilst I dont
believe it is all doom and gloom out there, it is definitely tougher to convert leads into
sales and there are fewer opportunities. That said, team leaders must encourage their
staff to raise their game and sell themselves out of the credit crunch.
6. Dont be tempted to carry anyone who is not up to the job
Leadership skills are ever more important during a credit crunch and you must lead from
the front and inspire the team. Concentrate on motivating your best people and dont be
tempted to carry anyone who is not up to the job this can be highly demotivating for
the rest of the team.
7. Keep things fresh

As obvious as it may sound, the key to motivation is to keep

things fresh. Any job, however much you enjoy it, can become monotonous. This is
even more true for the call centre environment.
9. Training is always good, it keeps people up to date and focused on the job
Regular, effective and relevant training is massively important and a great motivator. If
you want them to perform properly and consistently then you have to give them the
tools to do so. Training is always good, it keeps people up to date and focused on the
job at hand, it keeps their skills at the forefront and it will show them that management
are obviously concerned with how well they do their job, etc.
If they are given good quality training that covers the topics and issues they are faced
with then they will respond and to a certain extent motivate themselves to stick with
what they learn.
10. Offer a nice clean working environment

You need to make sure that the environment they are working
in is conducive to good performance. Everyone likes to work somewhere nice, clean
carpets, working computers and phones, a couple of nice plants.
Consider this, which team do you think would give the best performance, the one who
works in a scruffy office where the equipment only works half of the time and the
managers never offer any support, or the team that works in a clean, friendly office
where everything works properly and managers spend their day patting you on the
back?

I appreciate that Ive given an extreme example but the fact remains that if your call
centre is clean and welcoming then your team will want to be there and motivation is
much easier to come by.
11. We all like to be rewarded or praised for doing it well
A good reward scheme is a great motivator, especially if your team are conducting outbound
calls. Human nature dictates that no matter what job we do we all like to be rewarded or praised
for doing it well. Sales people live by that, generally because the better they do the more money
they get.What you have to do is have more than one programme running at any given time
immediate, daily, weekly, monthly it doesnt really matter what timescales are involved the
key is to run a programme that suits all members of the team. Basically, the thing that might
motivate the top sales person wont necessarily work with an average performer and vice versa.
So if you have different options then you should 15. Learn from experienced agents

Dont be afraid to ask agents if they have created their own guides, tips, or FAQ
documents that they can share with you.

bunnycatz

Many agents create their own documents but this valuable information can get
overlooked.
be able to give all of them something to aim for.
16. Remind agents that it will get easier

Take time each week to assess and congratulate agents on how far they have come.
Remind them how nice it feels when you help a customer and they go away happy
19. Stress release days

Have stress release days for agents, fun days, etc. This all adds to relieving stress for
the agents. Also try and get management involved
24. Have fun!

Finally, and most important of all, is to have fun. We all perform better when we are
doing something that we enjoy.
25. Introduce colour in the work space
Inspire your staff to work hard and strive for success. Call centres can be bland, so you
can create a more vibrant atmosphere by introducing colour in the work space, using
motivational images and pictures to brighten the area. These little, low-cost
improvements can make a significant impact on your workforce.
You know your staff better than anyone else; if you have new motivational ideas for your
call centre workforce dont be afraid to try them. Sometimes the simplest of changes
can make a significant impact on employees working culture and attitude.