5 Common Reasons for High AHT in BPO
A call center is a place where thousands of calls land in a day. To ensure that each and every single call should be handled by the customer support executive it is imperative that a call center should have enough manpower to handle these calls.
A dedicated WFM team is assigned to forecast the call volume for the day or week in the call center. On the basis of forecasted calls required manpower is decided and rostered for the day/week.
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| 5 Common Reasons for High AHT in BPO |
Also read: Role of WFM team in a call center
Though it is fair to say that prediction can not be 100% accurate which is why the client accepts agreed variance in the metrics.
One of the most important KPIs is AHT which plays a key role in customer experience. If AHT is within limits then the call center can handle maximum calls which will reduce abandoned and increase the customer's positive experience.
However, there may be various reasons which can lead to high AHT.
In today's article, we are going to discuss "What are the reasons for high AHT in BPO?"
But before that let's understand What is AHT?
AHT is an abbreviation for Average Handling Time which means the time taken by an advisor to handle a customer's query.
3 major components for AHT are Talktime, hold time and wrap time.
We can derive the formula below :
AHT Formula = (Talktime+ Hold Time + Wrap Time)/Number of calls
Now let's discuss the 5 common reasons for high AHT in BPO
Learn more: How to calculate AHT in Call Center
What are the reasons for high AHT in BPO?
A call center provides customer services to multiple domains e.g healthcare, telecommunication, e-commerce, etc. The AHT depends on the nature of business and client requirements. However, for most inbound customer service processes, the AHT is very low compared to outbound processes.
For an e-commerce inbound process, the idle AHT can be 3-5 mins, while for a sales process this AHT can increase up to 10 mins.
Let's talk about the inbound process where the client targets less AHT. Nevertheless despite aiming for low AHT there are several reasons which can contribute to increasing AHT.
1. Lack of product knowledge:
One of the major reasons for high AHT is that advisors do not have complete product knowledge. Every time a customer makes a query, the advisor puts the customer on hold and goes to consult with the supervisor. An increase in the hold is also part of AHT which is why the AHT goes higher for the process.
A basic recommendation is to conduct refresher training at regular intervals and especially for agents who have less product knowledge
2. Unskilled Advisors:
The other reason that can drastically affect the AHT is the unskilled advisors which means the lack of communication skills and not computer savvy.
Communication skills do not mean being proficient in the English language, but communication skills here mean how effectively you can convey your message to a customer so that he would not call/chat us back.
The other skill the advisor must possess is a decent typing speed. Be it voice or chat process typing speed is the key to improving AHT. Often it happens that the advisor handles the call very dedicated but when he/she has to tag the notes it takes a lot of time which in turn increases the AHT of the call.
3. Specific call drivers:
On a specific day, there may be several call drivers which can increase the hold time to resolve the query which is the reason for the high AHT.
For example, if in the telecommunication domain on a specific interval there is some technical glitch due to which customer has to experience "no network" issue.
In such cases most often call center experiences high call volume because customers can get panic and call customer care for support as this is a new situation for customer support executives also hence they take time to consult with a supervisor, tagging and finally raise tickets (if required).
4. No Real-time Monitoring:
Above all these reasons what matters most is the real-time monitoring of agents. If on a normal day as well when there is less call flow if monitoring of agents is not rigorous then it will surely be going to increase the AHT.
There are several call center tools by which supervisors can monitor every activity of an agent by just sitting at their workplace. One can take a step ahead and can monitor the agent's activity by floor walking as well.
5. Less tenured agents:
Needless to mention that less tenured agents are less productive and also take time to settle in the process hence the AHT for new agents is always higher.
This is evident and the client also understands the same and hence does not expect them to achieve the AHT targets. However, with continuous support from the floor supervisor and colleagues AHT can be reduced in a shorter span.
In addition to above mentioned 5 reasons, there may be other reasons like a technical issue, probable attrition, agents will issue, etc
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