Average speed of answer (ASA)

Average speed of answer (ASA) is the average time a caller spends waiting before an agent answers. If ten callers wait varying lengths of time, you add all their wait times and divide by the number of answered calls. A low ASA means people get through quickly; a high one means they sit listening to hold music and growing impatient. It is one of the headline numbers any inbound operation watches.

ASA is measured per Ingroup as calls move through the Call queue. It only counts answered calls, which is an important catch: if frustrated callers hang up first, those drop out of the average and ASA can look better than the real experience. That is why you always read it next to your Abandonment rate — a great ASA with heavy abandonment usually means you are only answering the patient callers and losing the rest before they ever count.

What moves the number

ASA goes up when calls arrive faster than agents free up, or when too few agents are logged in. It feeds directly into the caller's Estimated hold time and is the main lever behind your Service level percentage. Most Service level agreement (SLA) commitments are written as a speed-of-answer promise, so ASA is often the single number a client cares about most, and the one a contract penalty is tied to when you miss it.

To pull ASA down, add agents to the queue at peak times, use Skills-based routing so the right person answers without bouncing the call around, and watch the Real-time report for live wait times so you can react before callers give up. Forecasting helps too: if you know noon is always busy, staff for noon instead of scrambling when the queue backs up and the speed-of-answer number starts climbing.

When you report ASA back to a client, be clear about which calls it includes and over what window. An hourly ASA can swing wildly on a quiet line where one slow answer skews the average, so a daily or weekly figure is usually steadier and fairer. Read it together with the Abandonment rate and the overall Service level and you get an honest picture of the wait experience rather than a single number that flatters the truth.