Picture a caller stuck on hold while an agent flips between scripts and screens; every extra second raises frustration and cost. Average Handle Time (AHT) sits at the center of that problem as a core contact center metric that combines talk time, hold time, and wrap-up time and shapes service level, agent productivity, and queue times. Want to cut response time, improve first call resolution, and deliver faster, more efficient customer interactions without sacrificing service quality? That’s where innovations like what is text to speech used for come into play, helping transform customer engagement.
Voice AI’s text to speech tool can help by automating routine prompts, shortening talk time and wrap-up time while keeping a natural tone, and freeing agents to handle complex issues, so you lower Average Handle Time without losing empathy.
What is Average Handle Time (AHT) and How Do You Calculate It?
Average Handle Time (AHT), measures the average duration of a customer interaction from start to finish. It tracks how long an agent spends on a contact, including live conversation, the time the customer spends on hold, and the work done after the contact to close the ticket. Contact centers use AHT as a core call center metric and KPI to gauge operational efficiency, forecast staffing needs, and control support costs.
The Three Parts of AHT and Why Each Part Counts
Talk Time
This is the live interaction between agent and customer. It captures problem-solving, explanation, and negotiation. Accurate talk time reflects agent communication skills and the complexity of issues.
Hold Time
This is the time the customer waits while the agent consults, runs checks, or routes the call. Holding impacts customer experience and queue performance metrics such as average speed of answer and abandonment rate.
After Call Work
Also called wrap-up time or follow-up time, this includes updating CRM records, logging resolutions, and any required outbound actions. After call, work completes the interaction and affects throughput and agent occupancy.
Why Count All Three?
Each component consumes agent time and budget. Combined, they form handle time per interaction, which informs WFM, workforce scheduling, and call center analytics.
The AHT Formula: How to Calculate It Step by Step
Core formula for voice contacts
AHT = (total talk time + total hold time + total after-call work time) / total number of calls handled
- Add up all talk time minutes for the period.
- Add up all hold time minutes for the same period.
- Add up all the call work minutes for those calls.
- Divide the total minutes by the number of handled calls to get the average minutes per call.
What Unit Should You Use?
Choose seconds or minutes and use the same unit across talk, hold, and after call work for the calculation to work.
AHT by Channel: Formulas for Calls, Email, and Live Chat
Phone calls
AHT = (talk + hold + follow-up times) / total number of calls
You can substitute after-call work with follow-up times for a broader view that includes outbound actions.
AHT = (total time working on emails + waiting or queue time) / total number of emails
Email AHT focuses on ticket resolution time because there is no live talk time.
Live chat
AHT = total handle time across chats / total number of chats
Chat handle time often includes concurrent chat occupancy adjustments in workforce management.
What counts as handle time per interaction varies by channel and by how your contact center logs tasks.
What is a Good Average Handle Time? Benchmarks by Industry
A good AHT balance respects customer time while allowing agents to resolve issues fully. A typical target is about six minutes, but industry norms differ:
- Retail: 3 to 4 minutes
- Banking and financial services: 4 to 6 minutes
- Telecommunications: 5 to 7 minutes
- Technical support: 8 to 10 minutes
- Healthcare: 6 to 8 minutes
- Travel and hospitality: 3 to 5 minutes
- Utilities: 4 to 6 minutes
- Insurance: 5 to 7 minutes
Use these benchmarks alongside first call resolution, service level, and customer satisfaction scores to set realistic goals.
Five Business Benefits of Tracking Average Handle Time
1. Meet Customer Expectations
AHT reveals how long customers wait and how fast issues close. Shorter handle times improve the average speed of answer and reduce abandonments for routine requests.
2. Turn Support Into a Revenue Contributor
By comparing agent wages, occupancy, and handle time against revenue metrics, you can identify efficiency gains that lower the cost per contact and raise profitability.
3. Spot Internal Bottlenecks
High hold times or long follow-up times indicate slow processes, approval delays, or missing knowledge base content that hinder faster resolution.
4. Measure Product Complexity and Resource Quality
Consistently long AHT for one product flags documentation gaps or product issues, and justifies training or product changes.
5. Optimize Staffing and Scheduling
Use AHT with contact volume and WFM tools to forecast headcount needs, adjust shrinkage and breaks, and set realistic service level targets.
AHT Calculation Example 1: Bulk Call Scenario
Data
- Number of calls: 150
- Total talk time: 3,000 minutes
- Total hold time: 700 minutes
- Total follow-up time: 500 minutes
Calculation
Add the three time components: 3,000 + 700 + 500 = 4,200 minutes.
Divide by calls: 4,200 / 150 = 28 minutes per call.
Units must match. If you use seconds, convert all components to seconds before dividing.
AHT Calculation Example 2: Small Team Day
Data
- Number of calls: 10
- Talk time: 50 minutes
- Hold time: 5 minutes
- After call work: 5 minutes
Calculation
Total minutes = 50 + 5 + 5 = 60 minutes.
AHT = 60 / 10 = 6 minutes per call.
Use this figure to model occupancy, average speed of answer, and required headcount for forecasted contact volume.
Quick Tips for Practical AHT Measurement
Keep your logging rules strict so talk time, hold time, and wrap-up time are recorded consistently. Utilize call center analytics and AHT calculators for quick and accurate checks. Align AHT targets with quality metrics like FCR and CSAT so agents do not rush resolution for the sake of a lower number.
Factors That Push AHT Up or Down
Call Complexity
Simple account queries run faster than deep technical troubleshooting. When issues require multi-step diagnostics, AHT rises because talk and hold time expand and follow-up tasks grow.
Agent Performance and Expertise
Experienced agents resolve cases faster and close tickets with less after-call work. Invest in ongoing training, a current knowledge base, and role specialization to shorten handle time and improve agent productivity.
Customer Behavior
Customer readiness, decision making, and technical ability affect how fast you reach a resolution. Emotional or confused customers require more time and patience, which in turn lengthens the handling time.
Internal Communication
Frequent supervisor approvals or handoffs to other departments add hold time and transfers. Use real-time collaboration tools and clear escalation paths to reduce those delays and lower AHT.
Customer Self-Service Options
Well-designed IVR flows, knowledge bases, AI chatbots, and community forums shift routine volume away from agents and cut average handle time for the remaining contacts.
Call Routing and Queuing Strategies
Skill-based routing, predictive distribution, and fewer unnecessary transfers get customers to the right agent faster and reduce repeat touches that inflate handle time.
Questions to Keep You Moving
- Which metric will you pair with AHT to prevent rushed service?
- How will you adjust WFM models when AHT drops or rises unexpectedly?
Tracking AHT alongside FCR, CSAT, occupancy, and shrinkage gives a fuller view of performance without sacrificing quality.
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Why is Average Handle Time Important?
Average Handle Time functions as a clear operational benchmark. It shows how long agents spend on calls, on hold, and on after-call work. When AHT falls, agents can process more interactions per shift, which raises agent productivity and improves occupancy. That creates room to reassign staff to priority queues, plan learner schedules, and serve seasonal spikes without emergency hires.
Keep in mind that AHT is a signal of process friction as much as of agent speed. A high AHT often points to slow systems, poor call routing, or missing knowledge content. A low AHT can mean streamlined workflows, but it can also hide rushed handoffs or incomplete problem-solving.
Customer Experience: Fast, Not Rushed
Customers want answers quickly. They also wish to answer that stick. AHT provides visibility into customer wait times on hold, conversation durations, and wrap-up time following calls. When AHT falls due to agents resolving issues efficiently and closing queues, CSAT and first call resolution rates increase.
If AHT falls because agents push callers off the line before resolving issues, repeat contacts climb, and satisfaction drops.
Which outcome are you tracking:
Shorter calls or fewer repeat calls? Use AHT alongside FCR and CSAT to determine whether speed translates to actual customer value.
Cost Management: How to Handle Time Drives Spend
Labor is the most significant cost in most contact operations. AHT directly affects cost per contact and the number of agents you must staff during peaks. For example, reducing average talk time by a minute across hundreds of seats changes total capacity and cuts cost per interaction.
That translates into fewer overtime hours, lower hiring needs, and a smaller budget for temporary agents. At the same time, aggressive AHT reduction without quality checks can increase repeat calls and erase those savings. Track cost per contact, occupancy, and queue time with AHT so staffing forecasts and budget decisions rest on a realistic view of throughput and service level.
Agent Performance and Training: Signal for Smarter Coaching
AHT identifies patterns that point to training gaps, poor scripts, or routing problems. When an agent’s handle time is high, examine call recordings, topic mix, and after-call work to identify the root cause.
Pair AHT with FCR and CSAT when you assess performance, so coaching targets both speed and quality. Implement practical fixes, including quicker access to knowledge articles, clearer escalation paths, guided call flows, and automation of repetitive after-call work. Incentives should reward effective resolution and balanced handle time, not just the fastest calls.
Customer Retention: Why Seconds Add Up
Prolonged or frequent contacts wear down loyalty. Customers who wait, repeat the same issue, or receive only partial answers are more likely to move toward competitors. Optimizing AHT to reduce total customer effort strengthens retention.
That means measuring the whole customer journey across channels, not just single call durations. Ask how many minutes or contacts a customer spends to resolve a single issue. Lowering that total effort preserves revenue more reliably than shaving seconds off individual calls.
Practical Trade-offs and Real World Signals
What if you cut AHT aggressively? Expect faster apparent throughput, but watch for rising callbacks, lower FCR, and dips in CSAT. If you accept higher AHT to preserve quality, you may need more staff and higher costs.
Use AHT trends to inform workforce management, scheduling, and self-service investment. Test changes on pilot groups, measure FCR and CSAT, and only scale tactics that reduce overall contact volume while keeping customers satisfied.
Actions to Take Right Now
Which quick wins move both AHT and quality? Improve call routing to ensure complex issues are directed to specialists. Reduce after-call work through forms and automation. Build and surface concise knowledge base articles for standard scripts.
Train agents on efficient questioning that probes root causes instead of layering steps. Measure the impact using AHT together with FCR, CSAT, cost per contact, and queue time so you don’t sacrifice service for raw speed.
Questions to Ask Your Team
- What AHT target protects service level and keeps repeat calls low?
- Where do our longest handle times cluster by call type or system?
- Which AHT reductions have historically driven higher retention, and which have created more callbacks?
These questions narrow your focus on actions that improve both efficiency and customer experience.
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10 Ways to Reduce Average Handle Time
1. Root Cause Detective: Diagnose why your AHT runs long
Track every interaction and achieve full call coverage to identify where handle time balloons. Use speech analytics to flag dead air, supervisor escalations, hold time breaches, and repeated transfers. Add sentiment analysis to identify recurring customer complaints and friction points that increase talk time or require after-call work.
Action steps:
- Instrument 100 percent call recording
- Run weekly phrase and silence reports
- Tag common escalation triggers, and map findings to specific SOP changes
Rationale:
When you isolate sources of extra talk time and wrap-up time, you stop guessing and start cutting real minutes.
2. Live Scoreboard: Stay on top of team performance metrics
Make AHT a visible metric among many.
Display and review the following metrics:
- Calls missed
- Calls declined
- Average time to answer
- First contact resolution
- Transfers accepted
- Average talk time
- Average wait time
- Longest wait
- Average hold time
- Exceeded queue wait
- Queue abandonment.
Action steps:
- Create a dashboard with real-time and daily rollups
- Set thresholds for automatic alerts
- Run a short morning huddle to clarify targets for the day
Rationale:
Spotting rising queue wait or drops in FCR lets supervisors intervene before average handle time and CSAT diverge.
3. Micro Training That Cuts Minutes: Train agents to optimize AHT
Break training into short, focused modules that teach empathy, de-escalation, efficient call opening and closing, and fast knowledge retrieval. Use scenario-based role plays for common cases, maintain a knowledge matrix to match skills to ticket types, analyze strong calls as case studies, and run peer coaching where top performers offer concrete scripts or phrasing.
Action steps:
- Schedule two 15-minute micro sessions per week
- Build scenario playbooks for the top 20 call types
- Require shadowing sessions for new hires until their handle time and FCR stabilize.
Rationale:
Skills reduce talk time without harming first contact resolution or customer satisfaction.
4. Smart Automation First: Introduce AI into the support process
Shift routine volume away from agents by using conversational bots, IVR routing, and native AI voice assistants. Let bots handle password resets, status checks, and simple billing questions, and escalate only complex issues with full context.
Action steps:
- Pilot an AI flow for your top 5 repeat requests
- Instrument escalation handoffs so agents receive the bot transcript
- Measure containment rate versus transferred calls.
Rationale:
Good automation trims average handle time by preventing simple issues from ever reaching an agent, while preserving empathy through seamless handoffs.
5. One Pane of Glass: Equip agents with data and customer context
Provide a single console that displays past tickets, purchase history, recent pages visited, and open orders, saving agents time by eliminating the need to switch systems. Push relevant knowledge articles and recommended next steps into the workspace during the call.
Action steps:
- Integrate CRM, ticketing, and billing systems into a single view
- Push history snapshots to the agent upon answering
- Add a quick links toolbar for common resolutions
Rationale:
Immediate context reduces repetition, lowers wrap-up time, and improves FCR.
6. Knowledge at Hand: Expand self-service and the internal knowledge base
Create an internal KB that updates as agents identify fixes, and publish a public help center with searchable articles and short videos. Keep content modular so agents can paste precise steps instead of typing long explanations.
Action steps:
- Assign KB ownership to an SME
- Run a weekly review of top search queries
- Enforce a one-minute answer rule for standard procedures.
Rationale:
Agents and customers find answers faster, which reduces talk time, repeat contacts, and after-call work.
7. Automate the Routine: Automate your processes to shave seconds and minutes
Implement skill-based routing, automated data retrieval at call pickup, and queue callback options to reduce hold and handling times. Automate post-call dispositions and follow-up emails where appropriate.
Action steps:
- Configure routing to match the caller’s intent to the agent’s skill
- Populate the agent screen with the customer status in the answer
- Enable expected callback windows for busy queues.
Rationale:
Automation eliminates manual lookups and reduces average wait time, average hold time, and wrap-up time.
8. Self-Service That Works: Provide Customer Self-Service Options
Offer clear, searchable help articles, guided troubleshooting flows, and in-product assistance so customers skip the phone for low complexity issues. Promote self-service in transactional emails and the IVR, and measure containment and deflection rates.
Action steps:
- Publish a prioritized FAQ list
- Add guided flows for setup and troubleshooting
- Track self-service success and fallback rates.
Rationale:
Reducing low complexity contacts lowers overall call volume and the average handle time for the remaining pool of calls.
9. Stop Problems Before They Grow: Offer proactive support
Reach out early with status updates, onboarding sessions, and targeted education to help customers avoid calling with avoidable problems. Use data to identify patterns and send targeted messages to affected cohorts before call spikes occur.
Action steps:
- Run health checks during onboarding
- Alert customers about service issues before they need to call
- Create a playbook to convert patterns into proactive messages.
Rationale:
Preventing issues reduces contact volume and the share of lengthy escalations that drive up handle time.
10. Software That Enables Faster Resolutions: Equip agents with the right tools
Choose CX software that centralizes account history, enables real-time collaboration, delivers robust analytics, and supports omnichannel handling in a single agent window. Ensure tools reduce clicks, not add them.
Action steps:
- Audit current stack for duplicate systems
- Run agent time and motion studies
- Prioritize investments that remove tab switching
- Train agents on shortcuts and templated responses
Keep in mind that any effort to lower average handle time must be balanced with CSAT and NPS; after every change, measure FCR, CSAT, and NPS alongside AHT and adjust workflows if customer experience drifts.
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Content creators, developers, and educators choose from a growing library of AI voices, generate speech in multiple languages, and drop polished audio into videos, apps, training, and courses. Want to hear the difference? Try our text-to-speech tool for free and compare quality and speed.
How Better Audio Improves Call Handling And Average Handle Time
Clear, concise speech reduces talk time and hold time. Use Voice AI for IVR prompts, on-hold messages, and agent-assist audio to shorten call duration and cut after-call work.
When callers hear direct instructions, first call resolution improves and wrap-up time drops. That lowers average handle time and eases agent occupancy without sacrificing service level.
Practical Use Cases Across Teams
Creators use the tool for narration, podcasts, and localization to ensure consistent voice quality across episodes and languages. Developers integrate the API into chatbots, ACD flows, and customer portals to produce dynamic prompts that reduce queue time and response time. Educators export audio for lessons, accessibility, and quizzes, allowing learners to spend less time replaying content and more time absorbing material.
Features That Matter to Operations And Metrics
The API supports SSML, voice customization, and real-time streaming to fit contact center workflows. Pair generated speech with call flow logic to drop repetitive explanations and reduce call processing time. That speeds throughput per agent and improves handle time per contact. Monitoring average talk time and wrap-up time becomes easier when the voice layer is consistent.
Privacy, Compliance, and Voice Quality Controls
We protect voice data and support consent-based voice cloning. You choose neutral or local accents and tune prosody to match brand tone. Clean, intelligible audio reduces miscommunication, which cuts callbacks and additional handling that inflate average handle time.
Ready to Test a Voice That Sounds Human and Helps Your Metrics?
Which part of your workflow would you like to shorten first: call duration, wrap-up time, or after-call work?
