How to Reduce Average Handle Time (AHT) Without Sacrificing Quality

Every customer service team faces the challenge of balancing speed and quality when addressing customer queries. 

Handling email queries, technical issues, or service-related concerns—all come down to the same goal: resolving problems quickly without compromising on quality.

Achieving this balance is particularly crucial for services that typically take longer to resolve.

But how do you reduce Average Handle Time (AHT),the time it takes to resolve a customer’s issue, without lowering your service standards? The quicker you resolve issues, the happier your customers, and the more efficient your team becomes.

Let’s take a look and some practical tips and strategies to help you speed up resolutions.

Table of Contents

• What is the Average Handle Time in Customer Service and its Importance
• 8 Ways to Reduce Average Handle Time (AHT)
• How Hiver Helps You Reduce AHT
• Reduce AHT Without Compromising Service Quality 

What is the Average Handle Time in Customer Service and its Importance

In customer service, Average Handle Time (AHT) measures the average duration of a complete customer interaction, including talk time, hold time, and after-call work (ACW). It’s a crucial metric for assessing efficiency and improving service delivery.

How to Calculate AHT in Customer Service: 

The formula for calculating AHT is:

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

Understanding AHT is critical to improving efficiency in customer service operations. 

Here’s why it’s so important:

• Streamlines interactions to improve overall service speed, enhancing efficiency.
• Reduces wait time and leads to quicker resolutions, improving customer satisfaction.
• Helps assign resources more effectively, optimizing staffing and workload management.
• Tracks agent performance and identifies areas for growth, supporting performance evaluation.
• Ensures quick resolutions without compromising quality, balancing speed and service excellence.

8 Ways to Reduce Average Handle Time (AHT)

1. Optimizing Workflow with Automation

Routine tasks like assigning queries, tagging issues, and prioritizing tickets can drag out AHT. If your agents spend a lot of time on these repetitive actions, it takes them away from solving customer problems.

How to implement it?

• Automate repetitive tasks: Set up systems that automatically assign tasks based on criteria like agent availability, expertise, or urgency. This way, you minimize downtime between when a ticket is received and when it’s handled.
  
• Use rule-based triggers: For instance, if a ticket remains unanswered for more than 24 hours, set an automatic reminder for the agent or escalate the issue to a senior team member.

Pro tip: Hiver allows you to automate task assignments and workflows, saving time by ensuring every ticket is directed to the right team member instantly.

This can shave minutes off every interaction, adding up to hours saved weekly.

2. Providing Comprehensive Training on Tools

Agents often spend extra time resolving queries because they aren’t fully familiar with the tools they need to use or the processes they need to follow. 

The more proficient agents are with their internal systems, the faster they can respond to customers.

How to implement it?

• Create a knowledge-sharing hub:Set up an internal knowledge base with resources, guidelines, and templates. It saves time spent searching for answers.
  
• Implement role-play scenarios: Simulate complex customer scenarios regularly. This builds product knowledge and boosts confidence in handling tricky situations.
  
• Offer hands-on training for tools: Train agents to master all tools, like email management software and CRM systems. Focus on shortcuts and navigation techniques to speed up tasks.

3. Streamlining Internal Collaboration

Is your team losing valuable time waiting for input from other departments? Complex customer issues often require involvement from multiple teams—billing, tech support, or product departments. 

However, slow internal communication can significantly increase your AHT. When cross-departmental collaboration is inefficient, customers are left waiting longer than necessary.

How to implement it?

• Encourage cross-department communication: Break down silos by creating open communication channels between departments. For example, set up a shared Slack or Microsoft Teams channel where agents can quickly tag colleagues for assistance.
  
• Enable note-sharing on tickets: Rather than agents emailing or messaging other departments separately, enable internal notes directly on customer tickets to keep everything in one place. This reduces the time spent switching between systems and ensures the customer isn’t left waiting.

Pro tip: Hiver offers an Internal Notes feature where agents can leave comments or ask questions directly within the email thread, so no time is wasted on external back-and-forth communication

This simple step can dramatically reduce AHT when cross-department collaboration is needed.

4. Use Data and Analytics to Identify Bottlenecks

Without data, it’s difficult to know which specific tasks are causing delays. You need to analyze every step of your service process to identify where time is being wasted. From inefficient query routing to a bottleneck in handling certain types of requests, data will help you pinpoint the exact problem.

How to implement it?

Track AHT by Query Type

1. Use reporting tools to track AHT: Measure the time it takes to resolve different types of queries—like billing issues versus technical support. This will give you insights into which areas cause long call duration and need improvement.
   
2. Spot long resolution times: Use tools like Hiver’s Analytics to see which tickets remain unresolved for too long and determine why. This helps you proactively remove obstacles, speeding up customer queries.

Conduct Agent Performance Reviews

1. Regularly review individual agent performance: Use data on AHT, customer satisfaction, and query volume. Identify agents who are struggling with particular tasks and offer them additional training.
   
2. Identify and resolve bottlenecks: Pinpoint specific delays, adjust workflows, and improve overall customer service efficiency.

5. Categorize and Prioritize Effectively

Some queries can be resolved in minutes, while others—like troubleshooting technical issues or resolving account-related problems—require more time and attention. 

Misprioritizing tickets can lead to long handling times, especially when simpler issues are delayed.

How to implement it?

• Implement priority-based categorization: Automatically tag incoming queries based on their urgency. For example, For example, all incoming emails that have word “payment” in the subject line can be auto-tagged as “invoice”. Hiver tags allow you to customize and color-code tags for better visualization, and filter conversations by tags for faster access to information.

• Pre-schedule follow-ups for complex cases: For more time-consuming tasks, schedule follow-ups ahead of time so nothing falls through the cracks, and agents don’t waste time trying to remember to check back in.
  
• Create quick-response templates for routine questions: Have pre-written responses for common inquiries like FAQs or policy information. This helps agents respond more quickly and keeps customers happy.

6. Leverage Self-Service Options

One of the best ways to reduce AHT is by empowering customers to find solutions themselves. When customers can access detailed guides or use self-service tools, they no longer need to wait on an agent to solve simple issues.

How to implement it?

• Build a robust knowledge base: Create a well-organized library of FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and video tutorials to empower customers to resolve simple issues on their own. 

With Hiver’s Knowledge Base, you can securely share and access documents such as SOPs and training materials, with selective access control, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access private information.

• Add a customer support chatbot: A chatbot can handle simple queries, like order tracking or account updates, allowing agents to focus on more complex cases.
  
• Provide interactive troubleshooting tools: For more technical industries, interactive tools (such as a step-by-step troubleshooting guide) can help customers resolve their own issues.

This will not only reduce the number of tickets your agents have to handle but also lead to quicker resolution times, thereby lowering AHT.

7. Set Clear Response Time Goals

Agents need to know what is expected of them in terms of query resolution speed, and customers need to know when they can expect a response. This helps stay on top of service requests and ensures efficient handling times.

How to implement it?

• Implement Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Set specific response time goals based on the nature of the query. For instance, customer complaints might have a 4-hour response time, while general questions have a 24-hour window.
  
• Monitor and adjust SLAs: Review the response time goals regularly and adjust them as needed. For instance, if your team frequently meets a 4-hour SLA with ease, you might shorten the time frame to improve AHT further.

Pro Tip: Hiver’s SLA Management feature helps track and manage response and resolution times, ensuring your team meets time commitments without the need for constant manual monitoring.

• Use automatic reminders: Ensure agents are reminded of any approaching SLA deadlines to prevent tickets from breaching the agreed response time.

8. Continuously Gather Feedback

The best way to improve any process is through feedback loops. This helps you understand where your processes are thriving and where they’re falling short. 

Regularly collecting feedback from both customers and agents can help you fine-tune your strategies for reducing AHT.

How to implement it?

• Conduct post-interaction surveys: Send short surveys after each service interaction to gauge customer satisfaction. Ask questions like, “Did we resolve your issue quickly?” to get a sense of how efficiently your team is working.

Hiver’s Customer Surveys let you easily collect and analyze feedback, quantifying customer satisfaction and pinpointing areas for improvement.

Customize your surveys to gather targeted insights, track satisfaction, and analyze the data to improve your team’s performance and service quality.

• Hold regular agent check-ins: Ask agents directly what they believe is hindering their performance. They might have insights into system slowdowns, unclear processes, or bottlenecks that you might not see from a managerial perspective.
  
• Make feedback actionable: Use the feedback you gather to implement changes immediately. If customers or agents frequently mention a specific issue, prioritize fixing it before moving on to other improvements.

How Hiver Helps You Reduce AHT

Hiver offers powerful features that specifically address these needs, making it easier for your team to deliver exceptional service without unnecessary delays. 

• Shared Inboxes: Enables all support staff to easily access support queries from one centralized location. This structure reduces the chances of overlapping efforts and ensures that no query falls through the cracks.
  
• Automation: Takes care of routine tasks such as query assignment, tagging, and tracking Service Level Agreements (SLAs). By automating these processes, agents can focus more on resolving customer issues, which contributes to reduced AHT.
  
• Internal Collaboration: Allows team members to leave internal notes within emails, fostering efficient collaboration. This feature is useful when multiple agents weigh in on a single query, ensuring faster resolution times.
  
• Analytics and Reporting: Hiver provides detailed insights into metrics like first response time and average handle time.This data helps managers identify bottlenecks and optimize team performance, allowing for strategic improvements where they are most needed.
  
• SLA Management: Hiver’s SLA feature ensures that agents meet their response and resolution time commitments. Tracking these metrics helps teams to proactively address any potential delays, further lowering AHT.
  
• Round-robin Email Assignment: This feature ensures that incoming customer queries are distributed evenly across the team. It minimizes idle time and ensures that all agents have a fair workload, leading to quicker responses.

Reduce AHT Without Compromising Service Quality

Reducing Average Handle Time (AHT) doesn’t mean rushing through customer interactions—it’s about creating efficient processes that allow your team to work smarter. 

Tools like Hiver can further enhance these efforts by streamlining workflows, improving collaboration, and providing actionable data insights.

Try Hiver for free today and see how its features, like shared inboxes, automation, and real-time collaboration, can help reduce AHT while maintaining top-notch customer service.