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Net Handle Time (NHT) API - BETA

Historical API
  • Messaging
Updated:
1 min read

Net Handle Time (NHT) is a metric produced by a heuristic calculation, which is designed to provide an approximation of the average human agent effort time to service a single consumer interaction (agent segment) across a given skill in a one-hour interval.

NHT will provide a proxy for the voice metric of ‘Average Handle Time’ for the purposes of forecasting the number of human agents required to handle the received volume on a skill in the selected period.

NHT is intended to successfully proxy for Average Handle Time (AHT) in the asynchronous world of messaging, where an agent may have over 4 conversations assigned to them at any one time, and where, for instance, an interaction may last over 40 minutes but only involve 10 minutes of actual agent effort time.

The API provides up to 9 weeks of data. The data is available up to 8 hours from the moment it was stored.

Benefits

The new NHT API provides a historical data solution to provide brands with the Net handle time metric. The API also provides supplemental information which is mostly used to calculate the handling time, as well as other useful Workforce Management (WFM) metrics. The information from this API can be used for: 

  • Accurate prediction of required full-time equivalent (FTE) to service a skill within an hour interval.
  • Skill level heuristic approximation of actual agent ‘net effort’ time to service an individual conversation within an interval, independent of high/low volume impact to metrics like Closed Conversations Per Login/Online Hour (CCPLH/CCPOH).
  • General benchmarking of increases/decreases in effort required to service a conversation on a skill.

Versioning

V1 was used only in the early adoption phase and will not be maintained. V2 is the version that should be used when querying the API. 

  • V1 - Default version. In this version, there is no pagination in the response. Also, empty metrics are omitted. 
  • V2 - The version includes pagination to improve performance. The empty data element will be part of the response without a value.

How it works

NHT reviews the total number of segments handled on a skill within a one hour period and calculates the time effort required to service each by looking at a number of factors, including:

  • The total agent hours used to service those segments
  • The number of messages being sent by agents across the hour
  • The average load across the period

The calculation is designed to account for the asynchronous nature of messaging and the likelihood of invisible but agent ‘dead’ time whilst conversations are present but not awaiting a response. 

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Net handle Time - How does it calculate?

Activation

A few things you'll need to get started with this API:

  1. Retrieve your domain. Use the LivePerson Domain API to retrieve this information by providing the following service name:
    • leDataReporting
  2. This API requires authorization using an API key methodology.
    • Follow these instructions, to create and use an API key.
    • To access this API, the API key must have the appropriate permission for the method. See the documentation page for the method for more details.
  3. Here are the API terms of use.
  4. When using this API, it is recommended that you implement our Retry Policy
  5. Follow the information in the developer portal.

Missing Something?

Check out our Developer Center for more in-depth documentation. Please share your documentation feedback with us using the feedback button. We'd be happy to hear from you.