How to reduce the pain of high Average Handling time

BPO industry has its own kinds of metrics or say components (these act as instruments to measure) to evaluate their efficiency and productivity. One of such important component of evaluation of quality calls is known as ‘Average Holding time’.

In this article we will dive into this particular component to check why Average Handling Time should be as minimum as possible.

What do you mean by Average Handling Time?

‘Average Handling Time’ is the summation of the entire process of receiving a call till concluding the call from a customer by the inbound call centre or inbound telemarketing companies. It does not only count the receiving of the call from a customer, but also considers the time when a customer is made to hold on a call-the whole time of conversation with the customers till the time the transaction is completed and the customer hung up the call.

Why Average Handling Time is important?

The ‘Average Handling Time’ indicates how much time is taken by an inbound call centre agent to handle the call and fix the problem raised by the customer. This indicates the efficiency of the inbound call centre employees as a whole and also helps to plan tasks better.

Two components that are not included while calculating Average Handling Time are:

Ring time and queue time. These two are included in the calculation of Average call Duration.

Formula for Average Handling Time (AHT):

Average Handling Time:

(Total time of talking + Total time of holding + Total time of wrap-up)/Total number of calls handled

Now that we are quite sure and clear about what Average Handling Time is all about, we can dig a little deeper into the subject of the same.

High Average Handling Time is not desirable for the inbound call centre or telemarketing service providers. Because it means, an agent takes more time to conclude one call and thus the productivity of that person declines because he would not be able to handle more calls in a day if the Average Holding Time is high at his end.

It is also important to note that while the inbound call centre or tech support employees try to keep the customers on hold so that they can transfer the call to another more experienced agent, the customer might get annoyed. Because customers who call the call centres to seek help for their problem would want to resolve their problem as soon as possible and not to hold. Thus, an increased AHT would hamper the customer satisfaction too!

So, the wise decision that can be taken by the inbound tech support or Inbound call centres is to reduce the Average Handling Time to the maximum extent possible so that customers stay happy and productivity remains intact.

Here are a few suggestions for the inbound call centre service providers in India to reduce the pain of High Average Handling Time:

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  1. Calls Must Be Recorded: The first thing that should be done by the Inbound Call Centres or Telemarketing Service Providers is to record all the calls that are received by the call centre agents during the working hours. The Purpose of the recording of the calls is simple! The recorded calls would not lie about the performance of the call centre agents over calls. Thus, the problem areas can be identified easily with the help of those recorded call history and the team leads or managers can plan accordingly.

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    2. Impart Proper Training: Impart right kind of training to the employees of the Inbound Call Centres or Telemarketing Service Providers or Inbound Tech Support employees. They should be taught the art of how to address the problems raised by the customers. They should know whom to be contacted in case they can’t find a solution. Because, the skilled employees of the Inbound Call Centres would be able to handle the calls in a better way than the unskilled employees. They would be able to thus reduce the Average Handling Time in each call they receive.

·         3. Switch to Technology: Managers can opt for technology based solutions that would help to reduce the Average Handling Time. They can switch to automation for the works which are repetitive in nature. Few of those processes that were executed by the Inbound Call Centre agents if automated would speed up the whole process of calls. Thus the overall time of the call or put it as the Average Holding Time can be reduced to a great extent.

·         4. Greetings: The Inbound tech support employees can save a lot of time if they spend less time in greeting the customers. Instead, they can simply jump to the main problems that the customer is facing and try to fix it as soon as possible.

·         5. Monitor The Calls: Evaluation is a mandatory task to judge the quality of the performance of the inbound call centre agents, specially the new ones. Thus call monitoring becomes very important. This would help the employees to identify the reason why their AHT is high compared to others. Thus, they can improve on that part.

·         6. Structured Questions: More structured questions would help to wrap up the call faster. Because if the agents are to come up with their own set of questions to fix a problem on the spot then that would automatically increase the AHT. But if the manager of the say, Inbound Tech Support has already prepared a list with all the possible questions to fix the issues of the customers then automatically the Average Holding Time would reduce.

·         7. Listen: Inbound call centre employees should be given the recordings of their own calls so that they can compare it with other employees’ call recordings to see where he could have done a better job to reduce the Average Holding time.

·         8. Proper Routing: Routing of the calls to the most efficient agent would reduce the chance of transferring the calls to other inbound call centre representatives. Thus, it would reduce the Average Holding Time.

So, we have had a clear perspective about the Average handling Time and how Average Handling Time can be reduced.

Do you agree with the above discussed points? If no, they please feel free to share your ideas to help the inbound call centres or telemarketing service providers who belong to BPO industry in India to reduce their Average Handling Time and thus increase their overall productivity!

ICCS BPO: Outsourcing trends in 2018

ICCS BPO: Outsourcing trends in 2018: For the past few years technology has been the driving force of our economy. Efficiency is the key that drives the success of a busine...

Outsourcing trends in 2018

For the past few years technology has been the driving force of our economy. Efficiency is the key that drives the success of a business. Isn’t it? There are many strategies and service providers in the market that help us to strengthen our efficiency. One such strategy is Outsourcing. Before we start with the article let us first understand what Outsourcing means. Read on.

The business owners have a lot of responsibilities and departments to handle. Outsourcing helps the business owners to pass on some of their responsibilities like customer service, technical support etc. to a third-party service provider. This makes their job easier as they have someone to take care of a part of their business. Development is amazing, am I right?

Outsourcing strategy is changing business dynamics and has become a trend over the past few years. It has come leaps and bounds from the time it first started in the 1990s. Many companies have entrusted the service providers like BPO Outsourcing, Call Centre Outsourcing, for making their business run smooth. This not only helps in smooth functioning of the business, but it also helps in cost reduction, quality of the service gets better, productivity improves and so on.

We have seen a surge in the outsourcing solution industries for the past few years. The business sector in India is expanding and developing. With the growth of the business sector, there has been the development of many outsourcing companies in India. This, in turn, has increased jobs in the market. Outsourcing has revolutionized the job market not only in India but in other countries like the Philippines and so on.

Every year there are developments to the already existing technology in the industry that enhances their performance. In the year 2017, we saw so many new trends in the outsourcing industry. A new year brings new expectations. This article concentrates on the trends we can expect in 2018. Let us discuss them point wise.

#1. Top priority will be given to Data Security:

Information Security is an issue of concern for everyone. No business can run properly if there is a threat to their data. Due to increased prevalence of IoT (Internet of things) and telematics, the risks have also risen. In 2018 data security will be a top priority. It is obvious that better solutions will be expected from the outsourcing companies. To avoid any information breach, more secure and encrypted servers, advanced security automation etc. are going to be the dominant factor.

#2. The rise of Cloud Computing:

Cloud Computing means storing the data on online servers through a virtual medium. We are moving towards development at the pace of light and digital system storage is the result of that development. When we talk about business sector, we are talking about small-scale companies too. With limited resources at hand, a small business cannot afford state of the art infrastructure and space. Therefore, there is going to be an expected rise in demand of Virtual Storage Systems.

Flexibility and scalability are the two advantages of cloud storage systems which makes them the trendsetters of 2018. More and more business groups are adopting the digital cloud computing, which is very safe and secure. The outsourcing industries prioritize security which makes it impossible to penetrate these servers. Moreover, as the data is saved at one place, chances of losing the data decrease. There is going to be a considerable rise of cloud computing in 2018.

#3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) will get more popular:

Robotic Process Automation is the new technology that is gaining popularity. RPA replaces the jobs that would be done by a human being by a bot (a robotic software agent). BPO outsourcing companies are going to face a severe competition due to the rise of RPA (Robotic Process Automation). It costs the business owners much less than it would have cost them if they hire a human to do that work. Automated Systems help the business owners to make huge savings and are hence gaining popularity.

Take India for example, it is one of the leading outsourcing destinations. There is a long history of outsourcing to India. With the rise in RPA, the call centers in India are going to face some problems as the automated systems provide better performance. A New kind of call centers, that will use RPA, are going to be formed as a result. 2018 will see the exceptional rise in the use of RPA systems in the outsourcing industry. This will affect Outsourcing in India, as well as other countries.

#4. Improve in the quality of Outsourcing services and Rise of new outsourcing centers:

As there has been a rise in the Automated Systems, this, in turn, would greatly affect the quality of the outsourcing services. How? Let me explain. The demand of outsourcing centers like call centers will decrease, as explained in the last point. New kind of outsourcing centers with automated systems will rise. Those centers will provide round the clock services. As the bots can deal with many customers at once, it would increase the customer satisfaction. Hence the quality will improve in 2018.

#5. A wave of change in methods of marketing:

More and more business companies are choosing social media marketing, SEO services etc. to increase their popularity. They are outsourcing their requirements to different modes of marketing than traditional communication. 2018 will see a considerable increase in this wave of change.

#6. Startups becoming new BPO customers:

Over the past few years, there has been a considerable rise in the startup industry. But the startups have limited resources which increase the requirement of cost-effective labor. Here BPOs are going to come to the rescue. In 2018, the relation between startups and BPOs are expected to become more pronounced as they are going to provide quality service at a rate that suits the owners of the startup.

The trends that New Year brings to the outsourcing industry is going to bring some considerable changes. There is going to be a considerable increase in the fields that require the benefits that outsourcing industry offers. I think we can all agree that this makes the future of outsourcing very bright. It is expected to grow and flourish in the year 2018.

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