The Complete Guide for Average Resolution Time (ART)

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

- Peter Drucker, Father of post-war management thinking

What is ART in Customer Experience?

ART means Average Resolution Time, also known as Time to Resolution and Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR). It is a critical but common call center and customer service metric.

Average Resolution Time is the average time the agent or representative takes to resolve the customer service query or an inbound sales conversation through a live chat or call.

How do you calculate Average Resolution Time?

To calculate the Average Resolution Time (ART), take the sum of the total duration of all resolved conversations and then divide it by the total number of fixed calls.

Here’s the Mean Time to Resolution or known as the Average Time to Resolution formula:

Industrial Benchmarking of Average Resolution Time

The average benchmark of Average Resolution Time for all industries is under 8:30 minutes. For various industries, the recent benchmarking (as of 2021) varies as follows:

ART Benchmarking for various Industries in 2021

What is an excellent Average Resolution Time?

Typically, an excellent Average Resolution Time is within 5 minutes, where a customer is happy to wait to get the resolution to their query.

As per industry standards, 6 minutes is a good AHT for several sectors.

Once you have your Average Resolution Time (ART), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) rate, and Net Promoter Score (NPS), you can determine the pace of your customer service and decide whether it’s a good or a poor score.

How to reduce Average Resolution Time?

Let’s look at a few good practices to improve your ART.

Efficiently train agents for de-escalation techniques.
Encouraging agent soft skills is essential to handle customers’ patience while you resolve the conversation.
Improvising your Internal Knowledge Base (IKB)
Keep the customers engaged and let them not feel a lot of time is consumed.
Collate a high ART agent with a low ART agent for a better learning experience
Record calls and regularly monitor agent performance.
Leverage workflow automation to reduce ART
Review dashboard matrix statistics regularly.

Why is measuring Average Resolution Time important?

The clock starts ticking quickly when a customer reaches out to you for your help. Time is valuable to you, and your customer’s time is valuable to them.

Customer satisfaction comes from the faster resolution of a query or a complaint. So it is essential to know your Average Resolution Time for handling these calls to run your customer support and the call center efficiently.

Customer service metrics form the crux of every well-run business. It is an essential factor that enables the process of improvement.

Methods used for measuring Average Resolution Time might differ across industries and the kind of service provided. We cannot improve something we don’t know. Thus, measuring Average Resolution Time must be a frequent practice at businesses of all sizes, irrespective of industry.

Consequently, average resolution time (ART) can be measured using customer relationship management software (CRM). A tool to manage your customer service efficiently helps your business step forward in terms of customer relationships. This software is specially built for contact center management.

By utilizing the right automation platform, customer relationships and retention for the brand and business can be improved incredibly.