Good afternoon. I am the CC operations director and I’m currently preparing our strategic report for the executive board. I’ve noticed a major discrepancy that I cannot explain. My high-level ‘Executive Dashboard’ shows an Average Handle Time (AHT) of 8 minutes for our support queue. However, when I talk to my supervisors, they insist the AHT is closer to 6 minutes. I’ve verified that we are all looking at the same date range and the same queue. Is there a difference in how AHT is calculated at the ‘Executive’ level versus the ‘Supervisor’ level? I need to be able to justify these numbers to the board tomorrow!
Hello. I’ve handled many migrations from Zendesk and this ‘AHT Mismatch’ is a classic reporting trap. The discrepancy usually comes down to ‘ACW’ (After Call Work). The supervisor’s view often focuses on the ‘Active Interaction Time’ (Talk + Hold). However, the executive dashboards often use the ‘Total Interaction Time’ which includes the ACW. If your agents are spending two minutes on ACW for every call, that explains the 2-minute gap! You should check if the ‘AHT’ metric in your board report includes the tAcw attribute. Most directors want to see the total ‘Cost of Interaction’, which always includes the wrap-up time!
Hey! Stackoverflow style help coming from the recording export team! I’ve seen this same thing when doing legal discovery audits. Another thing to look for is ‘Transfer Time’. If a call is transferred three times, the ‘Interaction-Level’ AHT will be the sum of all three segments. But a supervisor might only be looking at the AHT for their specific agents. If you’re an executive looking at the ‘Customer Journey’, you’re seeing the total time the customer spent talking to the company. The supervisor is only seeing the time the customer spent talking to their team. It’s a ‘Total vs Segment’ perspective issue!
Good afternoon. I’m the Salesforce admin and I’ve integrated these AHT metrics into our CRM dashboards. One final thing to check is the ‘Outbound Interaction’ filtering. Sometimes executive reports include ‘Agent-Initiated’ outbound calls in the AHT calculation, while supervisors only care about ‘Inbound’ queue performance. Outbound calls often have much longer talk times because agents are doing proactive research or leaving long voicemails. If your board report isn’t filtered for ‘Inbound Only’, those long outbound calls will inflate your AHT significantly. Ensure your ‘Media Type’ and ‘Direction’ filters are perfectly aligned across all your reporting tools!