Help! Any AHT suggestions?
(TL;DR I work for insurance company/policy servicing taking escalation calls. An Average Handle Time of 900 seconds was implemented for bonusing about 4 months back and haven't bonused since. Need help, tips, tricks to cut call time!)
So I've been working on the phones with an insurance company since 2021 and on their escalation team about 2 1/2 years. There was no AHT even listed to check until this year then about 4 months ago they made it a requirement to bonus, it's now a 900 second average call time for the month or you don't bonus at all. That's a long time to not worry about AHT and get comfortable not cutting it down.
I haven't gotten bonus since this was put in place. Last month I was around 1300 seconds. Our escalation team takes no regular calls, no helpline calls, and no kudos calls. We get people coming in hot, rambling, get super complicated situations, we do policy servicing so if the customer has a complaint then a billing issue then a car that needs to be replaced we do it all, can't offer to call a customer back later, and we have no one above us to transfer to (unless the customer say "I want to SPEAK to the CEO".. asking for a call back, email or their direct phone number doesn't count).
I have children (1 special needs), my dad was just diagnosed with a medical condition that will require me to take off work to assist(I have FMLA, but unpaid and only a few days worth of PTO), and I'm scrapping by already. Yes I've missed bonus in the past but never 4 months in a row and I'm panicking.
So, all of that information to ask all of you lovely call center employees here... What tips, tricks, or pep talks do you have to share to help me bring down my AHT? I'm open to hearing anything, if there are youtube videos or podcasts I'll watch/listen. I care about my job and I want to help customers, but if my employer doesn't care about customers being taken care of more than call time, then I have to switch gears. One of my problems I've been told is I care too much, that I need to start thinking of that it's either helping the customer or feeding my kids, I really hate that but it's getting there. How do you help the customer faster? and in cases that people are just venting/rambling or it's a situation that you can't do what the customer is asking how do you cut in or cut it short, really short?
Thanks to whoever reads this and comments!