Average speed of answer (ASA)
Average speed of answer (ASA) is the average time answered callers wait after entering a queue and before a human or automated agent begins handling their calls.
How ASA is calculated
For a defined reporting period, add the queue wait time for answered calls and divide by the number of calls answered. Abandoned calls are generally not part of that calculation because they were never answered, which is why ASA must be read together with abandonment rate. A queue can appear fast if callers with longer waits hang up before reaching an agent.
Teams also need to define the start of the clock. Some measure from the moment the call reaches the queue, while others include routing announcements or time in a phone menu. Hold time after an agent answers is usually a different measure. Publishing these boundaries makes comparisons across queues and reporting tools meaningful.
Why ASA matters for AI phone calls
ASA shows how quickly a call operation begins serving demand. A long wait can increase abandonment and make even a successful conversation feel difficult. It can also reveal a shortage of available capacity, a routing bottleneck, or a queue that is receiving calls it was not designed to handle.
An AI phone agent can answer work that would otherwise wait for a person, but automation does not make queueing disappear. Concurrent-call limits, telephony capacity, routing rules, transfers, and downstream systems can still delay an answer. If an AI agent transfers a caller, measure the initial answer delay separately from the wait for the receiving queue so the source of friction stays visible.
ASA is an average, so it can hide a smaller group of callers who wait much longer than the rest. Review the distribution of wait times, peak periods, call reasons, and queues in addition to the overall figure. Service-level results can show whether calls were answered inside a chosen threshold, while ASA summarizes the answered population as a whole.
The goal is not simply to push ASA downward. The more useful goal is a dependable answer time that matches the service promise without routing callers to an agent that cannot resolve their request.