Aht

[Andy]

Hi,

We are into an inbound environment and providing technical support over the phone. Now from last 4 months we are firefighting to bring down our AHT but of no help and we couldn't reduce it to the mark we wished to and please note that ACW and hold time is not the issue. Can someone help me in fixing the AHT issue in my organization.

Thanks

[ghorrocks]

If it were only that easy. A lot of call centers struggle with the same issue. First evaluate your technology. Do you have the right technology in place for your associates to achieve your desired goal. Is it within reach? Has it been obtained prior? How many sec do are you expecting to drop? Next is the process flow correct and finally are your people trained correctly? These are all basic pieces that feed into AHT. You have to consider all of these and based on how many sec which one can you move the fastest kinda like evaluating your staff and who to coach. Which will give you the most bang for your buck. Once you have identified that part how are you going to make it happen.

Sorry there isnt a direct answer without evaluating your business. You may get some suggestion from the site however until you make an effort to evaluate it yourself you will struggle with AHT among other things. Good luck

[Andy]

Thanks a lot for the suggestion ghorrocks.

[Tapan]

Hi

I work in Bay Bridge Decision Technology and we use a scheduling software called CenterBridge which addresses the various AHT, problems too.

If you want to know more about it, feel free to email me or contact me. I would be more than happy to help you solve your problem.

thanks

Tapan

[JoeB]

AHT in tech support is driven by three components: the capabilities of the support staff as detailed in the post by ghorrocks, by the capabilities of the end users, and by the testability and supportability of the supported products. Obviously, non of these are influenced by scheduling software.

Ghorrocks already addressed the main points to address with the call center staff. I would also look at the information and support tools they have, such as a good knowledgebase and knowledge sharing tools.

Take a similar look at the customers. Can additional information, training and self-help tools reduce call load and improve the quality of the dialog and subsequently AHT?

Finally, some types of equipment and technical support just take time and unless you can improve the innate testability and supportability characteristics, AHT will not improve much. You did not specify the type of products you support. In some situations I use methods to model and simulate various failure and support scenarios to assess the current process against best practices and determine how to improve AHT.

I hope this helps.

[Andy]

Thanks Joeb, We are supporting Dial Up connections and we support the connection, browsing and some of the software issues. Now most of the time s we get customers who are old and are not technically sound so takes long time to address the issue. We tried to bring the AHT down but the quality of the calls got affected.

[JoeB]

Your customer base is the type that usually requires long handling time and is usually characterized by high variability in handling time. .

There is not a single easy way to reduce AHT. Instead, you may want to look into several ways to reduce both handling time and variability, as well as reducing the call volume, thereby decreasing the sensitivity of your call center to handling time. As you have experienced, focusing on handling time alone without additional considerations may influence quality and decrease customer satisfaction.

First, you may want to look into improving the skills and capabilities of your customers by giving them better documentation and provide simple tools, methods, wizards etc. to accomplish simple tasks such as verify connectivity, read and set modem parameters, setting email accounts, etc. I often discover poorly written instructions that once improved lead to a reduction in call volume, and a shorter handling time of calls that do come in. In general, properly design and implemented self-service tools can have a significant positive impact.

Additionally, you need to visit the interaction between agents and customers and ensure that agents are not only knowledgeable, but also have the necessary skills to elicit and communicate technical knowledge to non-technical audience. If practical, remote access tools, bypassing the end user, can help too.

Joe

[Eric Jorem]

It might be worth while to have a number of CCR's trained and dedicated to these users that are extremely low on technical knowledge. This training should emphasise on an amount of extra patience a CCR should have dealing with these people.
I like the suggestion of Remote Takeovers as well, but that might not be feasable, because you would first and foremost need to explain to the customer how to enable that.