What Is Call Wrap-Up Time? 5 Ways to Reduce It in Your Contact Centre

Chandler Galt of Talkdesk defines what is meant by the term “wrap time” and suggests how you can lower it to improve your contact centre’s efficiency.

Reducing average wait time and Average Handle Time (AHT) in your contact can yield huge customer satisfaction increases for your business.

One important way to reduce these important call centre metrics is by reducing the amount of work it takes to wrap up previous customer interactions so that your agents are freed up to handle the next one.

So let’s first outline what call wrap-up time is and the actionable steps you can take to reduce it in your contact centre.

What Is Call Centre Wrap-Up Time?

Call wrap-up time is the amount of time that a call centre agent spends doing follow-up tasks in order to complete a customer interaction.

This includes activities like adding notes into a CRM, speaking with a manager if they have unresolved questions, and toggling between systems to get ready to handle the next customer.

Wrap-up time is included in overall AHT, or the total amount time elapsed from the moment the agent answers a call or interaction until they finish post-call activities.

In order to calculate agent wrap-up time from handling time, you can use the following formula:

Calculating Average Wrap-Up Time

Average Wrap-up Time can be calculated across teams, departments or the entire call centre by substituting total handling time, total hold time and total talk time and dividing that number by the total number of calls (or interactions) received in a given period:

Of course, these calculations will only provide broad numbers about how much time your contact centre agents are spending flagged as after-call work time by your call centre software, not specifics about how they are spending that time.

How Wrap-Up Time Is Spent

Globally, the call centre industry standard after-call work time is about six minutes.

Typically that results from the time agents spend on post-call work like updating the system with details about call resolution, any next steps that are required and customer notes, and discussing resolution issues with their managers. The agent may need to email the customer or another department, or place additional outbound calls to the customer to discuss their issue further.

Along with AHT, this is a key performance indicator for agents since the amount of wrap-up time required for each call takes away from the amount of time they are available to take further inbound calls.

How to Reduce Average Wrap-Up Time

There are a number of ways that contact centres can reduce the time their agents spend on after-call work. Here are the top 5 ways that have been proven to reduce wrap-up time:

1. Integrating Your Contact Centre and CRM Software

One of the most effective ways to reduce wrap-up time is to integrate your contact centre and CRM platforms. Talkdesk Callbar sits on top of leading CRMs like Salesforce and allows agents to easily add notes without toggling between browser windows and computer screens.

2. Call Centre Agent Training

The more prepared agents are to manage customer calls, the tools available in the call centre software, and the necessary post-call tasks, the more likely they are to keep average handling time down as well as achieve the contact centre holy grail: first call resolution.

Agents can be trained to complete some of their wrap-up work during the call, but care should be taken that they don’t get distracted from customer needs.

3. Speech Analytics

More call centres are turning to real-time speech analytics to analyse customer mood and statements made during the call to help reduce how much time agents spend on reports both during and after the call.

Artificial intelligence can greatly reduce handling time by automatically filling in required fields in customer data and call records, or sending automated messages to customers or other departments.

4. Misused After-Call Work Time

Case studies show that unscheduled activities often contribute to after-call work time, which is why your numbers might not be entirely accurate.

Agents may use part of their post-call time to check their personal phones, run to the bathroom or grab a snack from the kitchen.

Call centre managers can use coaching and other techniques to reduce any unnecessary wrap-up time in order to help keep overall handling time low and customer satisfaction high.

5. Automated Agent Assist

Agents are extremely busy when interacting with customers, so providing automated recommendations can significantly reduce call wrap-up time.

Technologies like Talkdesk Agent Assist actively listen to conversations and provide recommendations based on machine learning and AI that can dramatically reduce the amount of post-call work that agents must perform to complete a customer interaction.