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what is an average time to answer calls at a call center
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5 Answers
The answer depends on the type of call center you operate. Here are a few guidelines based on industry type:
1) If you are an inbound sales call center, then you need a fairly fast speed to answer. I typically see a response times of 90% in 20 seconds.
2) If you are an inbound customer care center where the client is getting the service for free then these are normally higher hold times. I typically see a wide range here from an average speed to answer of 30 to 60 seconds, and as high as a few minutes to respond.
3) If you are in inbound customer care center where the client is paying extra for the ability to call customer care, then they expect quicker answer times such as 90% in 30 seconds or an average speed to answer of 30 seconds.
4) If you are an IT Service Desk supporting your internal employee's and their technology, then the range is anywhere from 90% in 30 seconds to an average speed to answer of 60 seconds. I would recommend a good balance between answer time and cost, so in this case somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% in 45 seconds would be ideal.
I hope that helps.
Best regards,
Scott McKinley
I totally agree with Scott and would take it a step further.
ASA goals should also take into consideration the customer's needs for your service. this can be totally driven by the key drivers as defined by the industry. For example....
I started my career working for a timeshare exchange company. Our customers had purchased timeshare weeks and could bank their week with us in exhange for another week at a different resort. Since we were the 900-pound gorilla in the market with little competion, we could afford to deliver an ASA of 2 minutes because of the captive audience (they had to bank their week with us, there was no other choice!).
Fast forward to my careen in financial services institutions like Schwab and Fidelity. Here, time was of the essence as a customer looking to buy or sell stocks could visually see the market move for or against them while waiting for a trader on the other end of the line (back in the dark ages before online trading was a viable alternative). An ASA of less than 30 seconds was imperative from a customer satisfaction perspective but also from a liability point of view on our part. If wait times were long, they could/would come after us for money lost as the market moved against them.
Bottom line is there is no "one size fits all" answer to this question. You really need to examine your customer's needs and expectations to determine the optimal ASA!
Great question!
Larry Streeter
I constantly get asked the question about how quickly "we" should answer calls, and what is the industry standard. The simple answer to the question is that there is NO standard. 90% in 20 seconds gets banded around quite often, but let me ask you this question first ...
Is it better to answer a call quickly, or is it better to take slightly longer and get the call to the best agent who can handle the call first time? I know what my thoughts are!
Answering a call quickly is pointless if the call needs to be transferred, the caller needs to be called back, or the caller needs to call back.
First Call Resolution is key. I think we would all wait a little bit longer for a premier service!
Design your SLAs around you and your customer. Make the SLAs realistic ... don't say that you will answer 90% of calls in 20 seconds and then fail to do so. Equally don't strive for 90% in 20 seconds and actually deliver 90% in 12 seconds. This simply means you have too many staff and it's costing you money!
While there is no specific industry standard, sooner is better. Of course, if you have dynamically scaling inbound call handling and fast-response IVR adjustment, you can achieve very low delays while still employing the minimum number of people.
Shooting for the average is setting yourself up to fail, to simply blend in with the crowd. The question should be. What is our competition doing? How are we going to blow them out of the water?
Average answer times? Sure, now that you know the average answer times, shoot for:
1) No wait times. Calls come in and ring to the first available agent.
2) If at all possible, you should be training your frontline agents to handle ANY customer issue. Just imagine your customer reactions when they call and don't wait on the phone, then when they are immediately connected to someone, that individual is ACTUALLY able to help them without having to transfer the caller or beg the manager for permission to solve the customer's problem.
This is the recipe for putting your competition out of business.
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