How to reduce AHT in an Inbound Call Centre?

What kind of calls are they?

Inbound contact center handling telecom prepaid calls

The idea is....

You at least give us someting to work with.

What we have here is the equivilent of telling your
Garage your car's engine sounds funny and not saying anything else
other than it's a Blue Toyota....

Regards

DaveA

Dave is right. Give us a bit more to work on and we can help you much more easily. But since this is all we have, there are some things I think I can say.

The fact that you are asking that question, and only that question is quite revealing. In fact you are not really asking that question. There is something that is more fundamental behind it. And the usual underpinning is, "How can we save money?" The formula in your head goes like this.

How many calls do we get?
How long does it take to deal with a call? (AHT)
Thus, how many people do we need to deal with those calls?
Hence, what are our costs?

Then you go back and alight upon AHT and wonder, "If we can reduce AHT, we can cut costs. How then do we reduce AHT?"

Which is where we came in.

I put it to you that you need to ask a better question. Reducing AHT is like asking, "How do we make petrol engined cars more efficient?" A better question is, "What is the alternative to the car for this journey?", or better still, "Do I have to make this journey at all?"

Forget about AHT for a while and listen to calls for a couple of days. For each one ask yourself, from the customer's point of view, "Did I want/need/should have needed to make this call in the first place."

Make yourself a little tally of those calls the customer was happy to make verses those the customer would not be happy to make.

[Hint: they are not happy to complain, chase progress or repeat information they have already given.]

Do that, and come back and tell us your score.

Then ask us an even better question.

Best,

Rob

Total agreement on the replies about FCR and that simply reducing AHT is, well, too simple.

However, to answer your specific question, here are some ideas, in no particular order:
1. Train the agents to handle calls more efficiently
2. Develop a performance system (not application) that tracks individual results against target.
3. Carefully define you metrics - and also make sure you are measuring other KPIs for the agent; # of calls, wrap time, productivity, quality and FCR
4. Provide a dynamic knowledge management system
5. Implement an intelligent workflow guiding approach in your CRM to facilitate faster AHT.
6. Differentiate calls. Not all calls are the same. Most people, even outsource account managers, would not mid too much if a successful up-selling or retention call too longer than normal.

Good luck

Michael