Average Handle Time (AHT) Calculator
Work out average handle time from talk, hold and after-call work, plus agent-hours per month and calls handled per agent-hour, for staffing decisions. Free.
Average handle time gets tracked as one number by the phone system and argued about in every staffing conversation, because talk time, hold time and after-call work each have a different fix and get blamed on each other. A team that looks slow on AHT might have fast calls and slow write-ups, or the reverse, and the phone system's summary rarely says which.
Enter talk time, hold time and after-call work in minutes, and calls per month. It adds the three into AHT, multiplies by call volume to show agent-hours spent a month, and divides the other way to show calls handled per agent-hour — the throughput number a staffing plan actually needs. All three run as one calculation in your browser, with nothing you type sent anywhere.
AHT = talk + hold + after-call work. Agent-hours = calls × AHT ÷ 60. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
This ran in your browser on what you typed. The product runs on your actual calls, chats and emails.
Work out your own AHT — start freeWhat each input means
- 01
Talk time (minutes)
Time actually speaking with the customer, averaged across calls. Your telephony or ACD report has this as its own line, separate from hold and wrap.
- 02
Hold time (minutes)
Time the customer waited on hold during the call — looking something up, transferring, checking with someone. If your system rolls this into talk time, estimate it or use zero and note that AHT here understates the true figure.
- 03
After-call work (minutes)
Wrap-up time after the call ends: notes, tagging, follow-up tasks. This is the component a call transcript summarizer usually cuts first, since it's the one least tied to the conversation itself.
- 04
Calls per month
Total call volume for the period you're measuring AHT over. Use the same month or week as the talk, hold and wrap figures so the agent-hours total is accurate.
Questions about this tool
It depends heavily on what the calls are about, so treat any benchmark loosely — a password reset and a billing dispute don't belong on the same target. As a rough rule of thumb, four to eight minutes is common for general support calls; consistently much higher usually points to slow lookups or unclear scripts rather than complex calls.