What is Average Speed of Answer (ASA)
What is Average Speed of Answer?
Average Speed of Answer is a common contact centre metric used in reporting. It reports the average time duration to answer incoming calls and gives an overview of general performance.
Average Speed of Answer is regularly referred to by the acronym ASA.
How is Average Speed of Answer calculated?
In its simplest form, ASA is calculated by dividing the total wait times for answered contacts from ‘inbound queues’ by the number of answered contacts. As a note, this only applies when calls are queued to an inbound queue, any automations from the flow script (such as selecting an option from a menu) typically occur before the call is queued and are out of scope for this calculation.
For example 5 contacts are answered with the following queue durations.
- 30 seconds
- 15 seconds
- 45 seconds
- 60 seconds
- 10 seconds
The 5 contacts have a total duration of 160 seconds. By dividing the 160 seconds by 5 answered contact, the ASA is calculated at 32 seconds.
ASA does not include Abandoned contacts (callers that hang up before connecting to an agent), it’s important to monitor abandoned rates. While the ASA may look ok, a high abandonment rate, may infer that ASA needs to improve.
Common mistakes when reporting ASA
As ASA is an average, it’s important when reporting this metric that at a good sample size of calls has been received during the reporting period, e.g. 50 calls. Where less calls have been received, one or two calls with long queue durations can skew the overall average.
Which reports can I use to monitor ASA?
You will find ASA reported throughout the reporting suite, a few examples are.
- Inbound Call Performance Console – as a line graph and includes the ability to drill-down into 15-minute increments.
- Inbound Campaign Agent Call Efficiency
- Contact Channel Comparison
- Contact Channel Overview