Missed business calls can have serious repercussions for contact center representatives since each call might indicate a dissatisfied customer or lost opportunity. Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is a key call center metric that can help managers assess their team’s overall performance and check their accessibility to customers.

But what exactly is this metric, and why is it so important? And how can contact center agents work on minimizing it to improve customer satisfaction? Read on to learn more about this metric.

Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is the amount of time it takes for a call center agent to answer an inbound call once it’s been placed in the queue. This period doesn't include the time it takes to route a customer to the right queue or for them to interact with the IVR system.

It is often used with the Average Wait Time (AWT) call metric, the time before a customer is connected to an advisor. ASA is also part of a contact center's Service Level Agreement (SLA) as a guarantee to answer a certain number of calls within an agreed amount of time. However, there are various rules for different contact centers, and it's been shown that callers can tolerate varying waiting times depending on the industry a company belongs to.

Since the average speed of answer measures different stages of an incoming call, which may be divided into an interactive voice response event and direct communication with a representative, manual calculation for it can be tricky.

You can always track ASA for incoming calls using a customer service dashboard that aggregates the total time spent in a queue and waiting time while the agent's phone rings. This means adding up every single second customers waits for their call to be picked up into a single figure.

You need the same values for calculating the speed manually. Once you have all the required data, you can divide the total length of the customer wait time by the total number of calls answered and multiply it by 100. The formula for the average speed of answer is as follows:

Understanding the average speed of answer formula

Although the formula for the average speed of answer is fairly simple, you can understand it better with an example. Just note the total waiting time for calls at a call center for a given time and divide it by the total number of answered calls.

For example, a tech call center team answers 2500 calls in a week. The total wait time for those calls was 100000 seconds. Therefore, the ASA for the team for that week was 40 seconds.

This does not mean that every call was answered within 40 seconds; it's just the average amount of time it took for the contact center to respond, and there are bound to be outliers.

ASA is a crucial efficiency metric for call centers, measuring a team's overall performance. A high average speed of answer indicates higher efficiency and shows that the agents are dedicated to being accessible. It is also closely related to other customer satisfaction metrics and can highlight challenges outside of long wait times.

The average speed of answer at a call center is approximated to be around 28 seconds across different industries. Longer ASA is generally known to be related to bad customer service, increased agent burnout, and understaffing problems.

1. Check the call forecasting

Forecasting is a crucial aspect of planning for your contact center needs. By understanding roughly how many calls to expect at any given day, week, or month, you can plan appropriate staffing levels. Forecasting is much easier with 8x8 workforce management tools, and managers can spend less time scheduling and improve staffing without any guesswork or wasted labor.

2. Train and reskill agents as needed

The contact center industry is constantly evolving with new technology. Therefore, agents must actively learn from their experiences and stay updated on the industry's major events.

8x8 is dedicated to improving communications for clients by rolling out timely product updates to offer novel features and functions they actually want or need.

Since training every agent individually is difficult, managers can evaluate performance and progress with 8x8 real-time call monitoring and 8x8 Agent Workspace. These features allow you to oversee an agent in action and jump in to assist struggling employees. Moreover, this train-as-you-go approach makes new reps feel more confident and equipped to improve customer satisfaction.

3. Let agents take advantage of real-time analytics

Some agents can understand their performance better than anyone else. They can identify issues with figures and performance and make improvements without any intervention. This therefore allows your agents to view their performance analytics, which can empower them to drive changes to their approach.

4. Reward agents who go beyond the benchmarks

Although the main focus of a contact center is to ensure the customers are happy with their journey and experience, agent satisfaction is also quite important. If the agents are happy, they’re more likely to provide better customer experiences.

By encouraging friendly competition between agents, a contact center can boost morale and provide motivation for the teams. Although verbal praise and recognition are a must for personnel who perform well, their progress must be incentivized to reap better results. This can help them focus on the main key performance indicators (KPIs) and avail of prizes like gift cards or time off.

The best way to accomplish all targets is to keep your call center metrics optimized. The average speed of answer is just one of many that agents and managers need to work on together to reduce or minimize call abandonment rates. 8x8 Contact Center offers a range of features to identify and improve various call center KPIs, including a quicker average speed of answer.

Ready to optimize the ASA for your call center teams?