The Metric That’s Lying to You: AHT vs. Handle Time Composition

For decades, Average Handle Time (AHT) has been the undisputed king of contact center metrics. We track it, we report on it, and we bonus our agents based on it. We’ve been conditioned to believe that a lower AHT is always better. Faster is cheaper, right?

I’m here to tell you that AHT, as most contact centers measure it, is a liar. It’s a vanity metric that not only fails to tell you the full story, but actively misleads you into making bad decisions. It encourages the wrong behaviors, frustrates your agents, and ultimately hurts your customer experience.

As a founder who has analyzed millions of customer conversations, I’ve seen firsthand how a blind obsession with AHT can slowly poison a contact center. But I’ve also seen what happens when leaders shift their focus to a much more powerful metric: Handle Time Composition.

This guide will break down why AHT is so misleading, what Handle Time Composition is, and how you can use it to unlock a new level of performance and efficiency in your contact center.

Why Average Handle Time is a Liar

Average Handle Time measures the total time an agent spends on a call, from the moment they answer to the moment they hang up, including any after-call work. The formula is simple:

(Total Talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total After-Call Work) / Total Number of Calls = AHT

The problem with AHT is that it bundles together value-added time and wasted time. It treats all minutes as equal, but they are not.

Imagine two agents, both with an AHT of 10 minutes.

• Agent A spends 9 minutes talking to the customer, resolving their issue, and building rapport. They spend 1 minute on after-call work.
• Agent B spends 5 minutes talking to the customer, 4 minutes with the customer on hold while they search for an answer, and 1 minute on after-call work.

According to your AHT report, these two agents are performing equally. But in reality, Agent A is delivering a great customer experience, while Agent B is delivering a frustrating one. Agent B is also costing you more, because 40% of their time is unproductive “hold time.”

AHT is a liar because it hides this distinction. It tells you the what (the total time), but it doesn’t tell you the why (how that time was spent).

The Tyranny of the AHT Target

When you manage to a single AHT target, you incentivize the wrong behaviors.

• Agents rush off the phone: To keep their AHT down, agents will rush through calls, provide incomplete answers, and avoid asking clarifying questions. This leads to lower first-contact resolution and more repeat calls.
• Complex issues get penalized: An agent who takes the time to solve a complex problem on the first try will have a higher AHT and may be penalized for it. This encourages agents to “hot potato” difficult calls, transferring them to other departments.
• Rapport goes out the window: Agents are afraid to spend an extra minute building rapport with a customer because it will hurt their AHT. This turns your agents into robots and your customer interactions into sterile transactions.

Obsessing over AHT is a race to the bottom. You might shave a few seconds off your handle time, but you’ll do it at the expense of your customer experience, your agent morale, and your FCR.

A Better Way: Handle Time Composition

Instead of looking at the total handle time, you need to break it down into its component parts. This is what we call Handle Time Composition. It’s about understanding how that time is being spent.

The key components of handle time are:

• Talk Time: The time the agent spends actually talking to the customer. This is typically productive time.
• Hold Time: The time the customer spends on hold. This is almost always wasted time.
• Dead Air: The silent periods on a call, often when an agent is searching for information. This is also wasted time.
• Transfers: The process of handing a customer off to another agent or department. This is a major source of customer frustration.
• After-Call Work (ACW): The time the agent spends wrapping up the call, adding notes, and sending follow-up emails. Some of this is necessary, but much of it can be automated.

When you shift your focus from the total AHT to the composition of that AHT, a whole new world of insight opens up. You stop asking, “How can we make our calls shorter?” and you start asking, “How can we reduce the amount of wasted time in our calls?”

How to Use Handle Time Composition to Drive Real Improvement

At GoZupees, we use conversation intelligence to automatically break down every single call into its component parts. This allows our customers to move beyond AHT and start optimizing for efficiency.

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Attack Your Hold Time and Dead Air

Hold time and dead air are the biggest sources of waste in most contact centers. They’re a sign that your agents can’t find the information they need, when they need it. By analyzing the moments that lead to hold time and dead air, you can identify the root causes.

• Is your knowledge base confusing?
• Are your processes too complex?
• Do your agents need more training on a specific product?

We worked with a client who discovered that 30% of their dead air was happening during the account verification process. They were able to streamline that process and cut their dead air by 75%, which translated to millions in savings.

2. Diagnose the Root Cause of Transfers

Transfers are a killer for both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. By analyzing the calls that result in a transfer, you can understand why they’re happening.

• Are calls being routed to the wrong department?
• Do your frontline agents have the authority to solve the problem?
• Is there a training gap that is causing agents to escalate calls unnecessarily?

3. Automate After-Call Work

Agents spend a surprising amount of time on after-call work. Much of this is manual and repetitive. Conversation intelligence can automate a huge portion of this work.

• Auto-summarization: The AI can automatically generate a summary of the call, saving the agent from having to type it up.
• Auto-tagging: The AI can automatically categorize the call and tag it with the appropriate disposition code.

By automating ACW, you can free up your agents to do what they do best: talk to customers.

Stop Lying to Yourself with AHT

Average Handle Time is a comfortable metric. It’s simple, it’s easy to measure, and everyone knows what it is. But it’s a liar. It’s a vanity metric that hides the truth about your contact center’s performance.

It’s time to stop lying to yourself. It’s time to move beyond AHT and embrace Handle Time Composition. It’s time to stop asking your agents to be faster and start helping them to be more effective.

When you understand how your agents are really spending their time, you can give them the tools, the training, and the processes they need to succeed. You can reduce wasted time, improve your customer experience, and build a more efficient and effective contact center.

Ready to see what’s really going on inside your handle time? Request a demo of VerSight and we’ll show you the power of Handle Time Composition.