AHT or CSAT: Which Matters Most?

Striking the right balance between operational efficiency and customer satisfaction can be challenging. Recently, we asked our LinkedIn community: “How do you balance efficiency metrics (like AHT) with customer satisfaction metrics (like CSAT)?”

A few highlights from the conversation:

Rethinking Average Handle Time (AHT)

Jeffrey Rumburg, CEO and Managing Partner of MetricNet, LLC, challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding AHT. He says that AHT should not be viewed as an efficiency metric, but as a workload metric. This shift in perspective has profound implications for how we approach contact center management.

Rumburg says that treating AHT as an efficiency metric often leads to counterproductive behaviors. When managers set performance targets for AHT or try to minimize it at all costs, the result is often rushed calls and a lower First Contact Resolution (FCR) rate. This approach creates a false dichotomy between AHT and customer satisfaction (CSAT).

In reality, the relationship between these metrics is more nuanced. Rumburg says that as AHT increases, the cost per contact typically goes up. However, this increase in handle time often correlates with higher CSAT scores, primarily because FCR tends to improve with longer calls. This observation challenges the notion that shorter calls are always better.

The Cost-Quality-Responsiveness Triangle

To illustrate the interplay between various contact center metrics, Rumburg presents three hypothetical scenarios:

• High Cost, High Quality: Cost per Contact = $15, AHT = 10 minutes, FCR = 85%, CSAT = 95%, Average Speed of Answer (ASA) = 20 seconds
• Moderate Cost, Moderate Quality: Cost per Contact = $12, AHT = 8 minutes, FCR = 78%, CSAT = 88%, ASA = 45 seconds
• Low Cost, Low Quality: Cost per Contact = $10, AHT = 6 minutes, FCR = 70%, CSAT = 80%, ASA = 90 seconds

These scenarios show the tradeoffs inherent in contact center management. Rumburg says that most contact center personnel would prefer the first option, prioritizing quality over cost. In contrast, many enterprises tend to lean toward the third option, favoring cost savings over quality of service.

These preferences highlight a fundamental tension in the industry. Contact center staff, who interact directly with customers, understand the value of high-quality interactions. However, business leaders often face pressure to reduce costs, leading them to prioritize efficiency metrics like AHT.

The Role of AHT in Quality-Focused Operations

Scott Sachs, President of SJS Solutions, LLC, emphasizes the primacy of customer satisfaction while acknowledging the importance of AHT as a secondary metric. He suggests that AHT becomes relevant when agents deviate significantly from an acceptable range, indicating a need for coaching or process improvement.

Sachs also points out that AHT can be a valuable metric at the department level, helping identify opportunities to streamline processes and systems. However, he cautions that efforts to reduce AHT, such as implementing more self-service options, may sometimes have the counterintuitive effect of increasing average handle times for the remaining calls that reach agents.

Digging Deeper: Root Cause Analysis

Cynthia Long, Associate Director/ Group Manager Continuous Improvement, Innovation, & Operational Excellence at Intuit, emphasizes the importance of root cause analysis when addressing low CSAT scores. She argues that simply focusing on AHT is unlikely to solve underlying issues affecting customer satisfaction.

Long suggests that low CSAT scores could stem from various factors, such as:

• Process variance
• New service offerings paired with inadequately trained agents
• Customers having to call multiple times to resolve an issue

By identifying and addressing these root causes, contact centers can improve the customer experience, which may lead to more efficient interactions and reduced AHT.

PS: What do you think? Join our discussion on LinkedIn!