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What is Average Handle Time (AHT)?
Average Handle Time (AHT) is the average total time an agent spends handling a customer contact — typically including talk time, any holds, and after-call work — divided across all contacts. It’s a core contact-center efficiency metric: lower AHT means more contacts handled per agent, and lower cost per contact.
Why chasing AHT alone backfires
AHT is easy to game and dangerous to optimize in isolation. Pushing agents to end calls faster can lower AHT while hurting first-contact resolution — the customer calls back, so total cost and frustration rise even as the per-call number looks better. The “callback tax” is AHT’s hidden cost: two short, unresolved calls are far more expensive than one slightly longer call that actually fixes the problem. AHT should always be read alongside first-contact resolution.
How visual support reduces AHT the right way
On technical calls, much of the handle time is spent translating between what the customer sees and what the agent imagines — “is the light blinking or solid?”, “which cable?”. Visual remote assistance collapses that back-and-forth into a shared live view: the agent sees the problem, points to the fix with AR annotations, and resolves it directly. This shortens handle time by making agents more accurate, not by rushing them — so AHT drops while resolution quality rises.
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See how visual support cuts handle time in telecom contact centers.