A ticket is the basic unit of work in a service desk. Ticket handle time, therefore, represents the amount of labor required to complete one unit of work. Additionally, it is an indirect measure of ticket complexity. As an example, a typical password reset has a handle time of one to three minutes. By contrast, a ticket for a proprietary business application in Oracle or SAP may have a handle time of 15 minutes or more. So, how do we calculate it? For live voice or chat tickets, ticket handle time is the average time that an analyst spends on a ticket, including talk time, chat time, wrap time, and after call or after chat work time (ACW). For non-live tickets, such as email and web submitted tickets, the ticket handle time is the average time that an analyst spends working on the ticket before escalating or closing the ticket. Why is ticket handle time important? Since ticket handle time is a proxy for complexity, service desks with longer handle times generally require more experienced analysts. Additionally, cost per ticket increases as the average handle time increases! Learn more in this HDI Metric of the Month!
