Data makes the world go round, but without the right context, it can only tell part of the story.
For example, in a call center, the average time an agent spends on a call tells us little about the success of the call. If the call is very short, it’s as likely that the caller is getting annoyed and hanging up as it is because the problem is resolved in record time. On the other hand, if a call takes a very long time, it may be because the average call complexity is high enough to justify it, or the process is simply very inefficient.
In either case, the industry standard of 4 to 6 minutes is a useful starting point for making comparisons, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be your north star. Even if your agents spend more on each call, it doesn’t mean they’re losing customers or sales. In fact, poor phone calls and poor customer service are more likely to cause customer churn.
Therefore, average talk time figures should be taken with a grain of salt. These numbers help upper management predict and make decisions about call times, agent utilization, staff schedules, etc., but they don’t say much about how. Things like how passionate the agents are about their work and how good the customer experience is.
Is it faster or better?Average talk time dilemma
The age-old debate between quantity and quality is one of the biggest challenges in modern business management. We now have the technological means to make things faster than ever before, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to increased revenue or a loyal customer base.
The same principle applies to call centers. On the one hand, we want our agents to be efficient, and depending on how you define efficiency, it might mean answering as many calls as possible in the shortest amount of time, or solving as many customer issues as possible. can. No matter how much extra time it takes.
Of course, the problem with customers is that they want both. They want answers to their questions, concerns, and problems without waiting in long lines, making second calls, or following up.
So when it comes to you and your call center, your goal should be to improve both aspects of the process. The focus should be on reducing average call time while enabling agents to provide top-notch customer service.
Shorter talk time is not necessarily better
Since a balance between speed and quality is important in call center operations, you should aim to shorten call times without making customers feel rushed or dissatisfied.
The challenge here is to make average talk time an important benchmark for agent performance. Because sooner or later, your team will be forced to provide solutions on the fly to handle more calls in a smaller time frame.
Instead of demanding that agents work faster, call center managers should prioritize:
- Hiring the right staff
- Route customers to the right agent or department as quickly as possible
- Distribute work evenly to avoid agent overutilization
Find out the average call time
Given the right context, average call duration remains an important metric. It tells us:
- How much time your team spends talking to customers, such as how much time per day they spend answering phones and how much time they spend on other administrative tasks.
- The time it takes an individual agent to solve a problem of average complexity.
- How quickly agents close calls – Cross-reference with customer satisfaction and call resolution rates to see if agents rush and leave issues unresolved.
Again, average talk time metrics can help you make informed staffing and scheduling decisions, but they don’t give you the full picture of customer satisfaction or agent performance.
Things you can’t tell from average call time alone
Average talk time is definitely a good metric to monitor, but it’s not a great metric if left alone.
It doesn’t tell you:
- The quality of service received by the customer.
- Whether the agent actually solved the customer’s problem. No matter how long or short the call is, you want to ensure that your customer’s issue is resolved without any additional follow-up. To measure this, look at first call resolution rate instead of average call length.
- Because whether the customer was satisfied or not, whether the call was very short or very long, it makes a difference whether the customer felt heard and valued. To measure this more accurately, conduct a customer satisfaction survey.
Besides these major pitfalls, average talk time doesn’t tell you anything about:
- Various types of customer inquiries received by the call center, such as new product onboarding, sales, and technical support issues.
- Average complexity or urgency of customer problems.
- The most common points at which customers hang up and what happens after an abandoned call.
- How many calls do you get from reissuers?
- What issues do your customers frequently ask you about?
- How many sales and upsell opportunities are agents missing out on due to shortened or extended service calls?
- How many customers were connected to the most qualified agent for their problem?
- How good is your agent training?
Ignore average talk time – sort of
The average talk time metric is probably not as important as industry experts say. In fact, there isn’t even a reliable consensus on the ideal duration to begin with. Some say it’s 4 minutes, others say 6 minutes, and others vouch for completely different calculations. However, the truth is that most of these benchmarks are fairly arbitrary.
Sure, it may work or make sense for your particular business, but every business is different. In other words, if a call center continually strives to meet industry averages that don’t align with its business model, it can lead to unrealistic employee expectations and a bad experience for customers.
So use Average Call Time as a guide to spot trends and use it in conjunction with other KPIs to learn more about what you can do to improve your call center efficiency.
If you want to reduce your average talk time, do these four things
If all your other metrics and observations tell you that reducing average call time will ultimately lead to higher agent productivity and higher customer satisfaction, then go for it.
Here’s what you can do to reduce your average talk time:
Segment by customer type
Take a closer look at who’s making calls to understand who’s taking longer average call times and why.
Identify specific customer segments that tend to require longer calls than other customer segments. For example, some customers may call frequently because of recurring problems, or new customers may be looking for technical advice. Once you identify these causes, look for ways to improve the process for these specific calls and update agent training accordingly.
Similarly, connecting your CRM to your call center software and instantly redirecting callers to the right agent can also reduce average call time and improve customer satisfaction.
Segment by problem type
Some people call about problems with products or services, while others seek technical support. Others may have questions about billing or returns. For example, if you implement an automated IVR system, you can filter callers through a quick menu before connecting them to an agent. This helps match the right issue to the right agent, reducing average call time.
Prioritize Net Promoter Score
One good way to find ways to improve the efficiency of your call center is to conduct surveys and look at your NPS (Net Promoter Score). Once you know why certain customers recommend or don’t recommend your company to their friends and colleagues, you can use this information to improve your service and deliver it faster.
Check your first contact resolution rate
First contact resolution rate indicates how many callers’ issues were resolved on the first call. If both the average call time and first contact resolution rate are low, it usually means that agents are rushing the call, are ill-equipped to handle the caller’s problem, or are not calling the right caller in the first place. means it is not properly matched.
At the end of the day, the key is not to ignore average talk time, but to look at it from the right perspective. If you know how hard your team works and how effective they are, you can combine this knowledge with other metrics to help your call center grow.