Service level, waiting time and abandonment: the contact center numbers that matter
Six measures that tell you how your contact center is really doing — what each one means, how to read it, and the traps to avoid.
By The Noorixa team · · 3 min read
Every contact center collects more numbers than anyone can read. A handful of them tell you almost everything about how your customers are being served. Here is what each one means, and how to avoid reading it wrongly.
1. Service level
What it is: the share of conversations answered within a target time — for example, 80% of calls answered within 20 seconds.
How to read it: service level is a promise to your customers, so set the target first and staff to meet it. Look at it by half hour, not by day: a good daily figure can hide a lunchtime queue that left hundreds of people waiting.
The trap: decide how abandoned calls count before you compare months. Leaving very short abandons out of the calculation is common; leaving all abandons out flatters the number.
2. Average speed of answer (ASA)
What it is: how long, on average, a customer waits before an agent picks up.
How to read it: ASA moves with service level but tells a different story. A queue can meet its service level and still have a long tail of very long waits. Watch the longest wait in the queue alongside the average.
3. Abandonment rate
What it is: the share of customers who hang up before reaching an agent.
How to read it: abandonment is the most honest measure of frustration. It rises sharply when waits pass the point your customers tolerate, which differs by queue — a customer chasing a refund waits longer than one asking for opening hours.
What helps: offering a callback instead of hold. The customer keeps their place without staying on the line, and the abandon becomes a conversation.
4. Average handling time (AHT)
What it is: talk time plus hold time plus the wrap-up work after the conversation.
How to read it: AHT is a planning number first. It drives how many agents you need. As a target for individual agents it backfires: people rush customers off the phone, and those customers call again.
5. First contact resolution (FCR)
What it is: the share of issues solved in the first conversation, without the customer having to come back.
How to read it: FCR is hard to measure precisely. A practical approach is to treat a repeat contact from the same customer about the same topic within a few days as unresolved. Short surveys after the conversation add the customer's own view.
6. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) and NPS
What it is: what customers say when asked right after the conversation — a score from 1 to 5 for satisfaction, and 0 to 10 for how likely they are to recommend you.
How to read it: look at the comments, not only the score. Sample rather than survey everyone, respect quiet hours, and ask in the channel the customer used.
Putting them together
No single number is enough. A useful daily view for a supervisor is service level and longest wait per queue, live; abandonment and AHT per half hour; and CSAT with its comments at the end of the day. Forecasts for the next day are built from the same history.
In Noorixa, wallboards show queues, waiting conversations and service levels as they happen; service-level targets are set per queue and channel and escalate when they are at risk; and CSAT and NPS surveys go out after calls and chats by SMS, WhatsApp, in the chat itself or on the keypad.
- operations
- metrics
