Average Handle time or Optimal Outcome? Benchmarking Survey

Thanks to Dr. Jones she is running marathons again.

Surgeries were scheduled back to back that day. The first several procedures went smoothly and were completed within the time frame allotted. But, when Dr. Jones ran into an unexpected problem during his operation he took 2.5 hours instead of 1 hour. As result, two surgeries had to be rescheduled

The head of surgery was not happy. Faced with having to squeeze these rescheduled operations into an already packed surgical schedule and fielding complaints from the angry surgeons and upset patients who were impacted, he felt compelled to ask Dr. Jones whether that “extra” time in surgery was really necessary. Dr. Jones responded, “My goal was to apply my skills and experience in a way that would repair my patient’s leg so she no longer needed to depend on using a wheel chair to get around. The operation was success. So much so, that we expect her to be running marathons again within a few months.”

Fortunately for the patient, Dr. Jones opted not to put handle time ahead of doing the right thing, the most important thing — permanently fix his patient’s problem.

The same principle should apply when evaluating the performance of customer service reps — your highly-trained, skilled experts in customer problem-solving. While it’s fine to use AHT (average handle time) as an operational metric, it is short-sighted and to be blunt — just plain wrong to use AHT as a performance metric for reps.

Next Monday I plan to talk more about what the growing movement by call centers to re-think the wisdom of using AHT to evaluate rep performance.

AHT Benchmarking Quick Survey:

DO YOU AGREE? I’d like your opinion on the use of AHT as a key performance metric for service reps.
Are you thinking about dropping AHA from the reps’ scorecard? If you already have done so, what what were your reasons? Has it made a difference in performance?
++ Please take 2 minutes to share your opinions. I’ll provide the benchmarking results next Monday, April 4.++

Be happy.

Barbara Burke

Copyright 2011 Barbara Burke. All Rights Reserved.