Average Speed of Answer (ASA) / Average Delay

Author: CCa2z

Date: 17th September 2009

Average Response Time (ART) - also called Average Speed of Answer (ASA) or Average Delay (AD) - is one of the key metrics used in call centres.  What effectively this attempts to describe is the average time in which all calls are answered.  This means we take the total wait times of all calls and divide by the total number of calls.

Calls
Answered
1000

Calls
Abandoned
45

Calls
Received
1045

Percent
Abandoned
4.3%

Longest
Delay
120 secs

Average
Delay
10 secs

SL
< 30 sec
89%

Whilst this is a useful metric it is not absolutely correct, as many calls are answered immediately and some will wait much longer.  As you can see above, whilst we have an average delay of 10 secs, some callers can wait up to 2 mins.

Try telling the caller who has had a large delay y seconds that your average delay is only x seconds!

From the caller perspective the delay time is from the moment they have dialled to the point at which their call is answered.  This would, therefore, include navigating through IVR and subsequent queuing.  The call centres which only measure queue time are not accurately reporting, but this is quite acceptable as from their perspective, they can only respond to calls once they are presented to the queue and hence, the clock starts ticking.

This logic also applies to service level reporting.

Call >>

Network

ACD Time

 

 

Busy Signal

IVR Ring

ACD Queue

Talk Time

After Call Wrap

 

Where No

 

Turret Ring Time

 

 

Trunks

Delay Time

Handle Time

 

Available

 

Agent Load

 

 

Trunk Load

 

Turret Ring Time can occur where calls are presented to the turret for the agent to accept.


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