AHT Calculation Question - Outbound

[dh2004]

I'm fairly new to the day-to-day operations of the Call Center environment; however, i'm not new to developing metrics the measure the proper aspects of a business.

Does anyone have any perspective/thoughts on why the calculation for AHT for Outbound is: Total Handle Time / Connects

After doing some sensitivity analysis, think the calculation should be: Total Handle Time / Right-Party Contacts

Looking at this in detail: (Time spent with non-RPC's + Time spent with RPC's) / Right-Party Contacts.

My rationale for this calculation is two-fold:
1. The time spent on the phone with non-RPC's (wrong party) is very minimal, and probably consistently <30 secs on any campaign, thus the total time spent on these callers (dials) is a small proportion of the Total Handle Time
2. If you use the "Connects" as the denominator, which is convoluted with non-RPC's (wrong party contacts), then the AHT will have significant variability and becomes a function of the Right-Party Contact rate. Most centers already measure RPC contact rate as a separate metric, so why would you want the AHT to be a reflection of this already measured metric? Thus, you haven't isolated the true metric you are trying to measure which is rep productivity with RPC's. Thus, if you don't use RPC's as the denominator the AHT fluctuates directionally with the fluctuation in the RPC


Anyone think I am making a good point? Has anyone ever gone down this path with their call centers / vendors?

[sunil_misquith]

Hi,

As far as my knowlegde in Outbound goes, we do not use the terminology AHT in Outbound in particular. the apt word or terminology is the talk time. talk time is calculated based on the total time spent talking by the reps(connects) against the total hours clocked which includes the wait/idle time and wrap time. Talk Time% = total time spent on talking(connects)/Total Login Hours