What do contact center metrics like SLA, AWT and occupancy mean?
- Audience: Contact center
- Plan: Contact Center Pro
Last updated
Contact center reports and supervisor dashboards use a lot of short labels. This page explains what each one measures, so you know what your numbers are telling you. Labels in your reports and dashboard may differ slightly, and not every view shows every metric.
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Service level
Service level, often shown as SLA, is the share of calls answered within a target number of seconds. Check your messaging settings for the default target. It's set for your account, and your admin can change it. Ask CallSprout support whether your voice queue reports use the same one.
There are two ways to work it out, and whoever set up your system picks one:
- Standard. Calls answered within the target, divided by all answered calls.
- Leaving out quick hang ups. Calls answered within the target, divided by all calls received minus the callers who hung up within a short abandon target. This keeps callers who left almost at once from pulling the number down.
The supervisor dashboard is an add-on. It can use the same setting as your reports or its own. If the dashboard and a report don't agree, ask your admin which formula each one uses. When there's nothing to measure yet, the dashboard may show N/A.
Calls and wait times
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Answered and unanswered percent | The share of queue calls that an agent picked up, and the share that weren't. |
| Abandoned call | A caller hung up while waiting to be answered. |
| Exit with key | A caller pressed a key to leave the queue before being answered. |
| Timed out | A caller reached the queue's time limit before an agent answered. |
| Waiting time (WT) | Time from joining the queue until an agent's phone first rings. |
| AWT | Average waiting time: the average time callers wait. |
| MWT | Maximum waiting time: the longest wait any caller had. |
| Speed to answer | Time from the agent's phone ringing until the agent answers. Averaged, it's average speed of answer. |
| Entry position | Where a caller was in line when they joined. A high average means callers often join a long line. |
| Repeated callers | People who called two or more times in the period. |
Agents
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Session | The time an agent was logged in. |
| Pause | Time an agent was logged in but not taking calls. |
| Idle and busy | Idle agents are logged in, not paused and free. Busy agents are on a call. |
| Talk time | Time spent on calls. |
| Activity time, or handling time (HT) | Time from when a conversation was assigned until it was closed or transferred. For calls, this is talk time. |
| Occupancy | The share of an agent's working time spent on queue and campaign calls. It's that talk time divided by the session time minus pauses. |
| Missed call | A queue call rang an agent who didn't answer. One call can be missed more than once. |
| Dumped call | The agent hung up while the short announcement before the caller was connected was still playing. |
Chat, text and email
- First response time. How long a customer waited for the first reply from an agent.
- Resolution time. How long the conversation took to close.
Outbound campaigns
- Contact rate. Leads reached, divided by leads dialed. Which outcomes count as reaching someone depends on how your admin set up the campaign's dispositions.
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