What is After-Call Work (ACW)?
After-call work is the period between the end of a call and the moment the agent becomes available for the next interaction. During this time, agents complete post-call procedures such as adding call notes, tagging conversations, updating customer relationship management records, selecting activity codes, and ensuring that any required follow-up is scheduled.
In contact centre environments, ACW is linked closely with measures such as average handling time and customer satisfaction. It helps create complete service records by capturing call history, call summaries, call categorisation and relevant data that might influence future service quality. This applies across channels supported by an AI-enabled contact centre, where calls, emails and digital interactions all generate information that needs to be documented correctly.
What is ACW in a call centre or contact centre?
In a call centre or contact centre, ACW includes any tasks performed after customer interaction has ended but before the agent is ready for the next task. It covers wrap-up activities like updating the CRM system, documenting queue wait times, logging call sentiment insights, and reviewing reusable templates or knowledge base entries used during the interaction.
Modern centres manage ACW not only for voice but also for digital channels supported through an omni-channel model. It ensures consistency, regardless of whether the interaction occurred through multimedia voice, chat, or messaging.
Why After-Call Work matters
ACW supports both customers and the organisation by ensuring important information is captured. Accurate post-call documentation helps reduce repeat tasks, ensures service continuity, and enhances customer experience. When agents record details correctly, future interactions benefit because the next agent has relevant context, including call logs, tone shifts flagged by conversation analytics, and call transcript details.
Well-managed ACW also improves first call resolution, reduces customer wait times and supports reporting metrics such as customer satisfaction score and call centre performance reports. In industries such as housing, government and healthcare, and retail, complete documentation is essential for compliance, audit trails and customer feedback analysis.
Factors influencing After-Call Work (ACW)
ACW duration depends on issue complexity, system design, and how much information agents must capture. Accessible workflows also make tasks quicker, especially when tools follow inclusive design principles such as those supported through accessibility.
Several elements affect ACW duration and quality:
- Complexity of the customer inquiry
- Number of systems the agent must update
- Availability of automation capabilities
- Accuracy of call categorisation
- Type of activity codes used
- Skill group call requirements
- Workflow bottlenecks or operational concerns
- Contact centre software design and system interfaces
- Whether agents rely on manual entry or AI agents for assistance
Some teams benefit from workforce optimisation tools that help track performance, adjust shift patterns, and identify areas where wrap-up processes take longer than expected.
How to calculate After-Call Work (ACW)
ACW is the average time that agents spend completing wrap-up tasks after each interaction. It is usually calculated as:
ACW time = Total wrap-up time / Number of handled calls
This helps leaders understand workload and identify inefficiencies, especially in high call volume environments. ACW Timer features in many systems show the initial ACW duration, snooze duration, and any missed call work triggered when an interaction is not completed. These metrics help track trends in start missed call timer settings, agent ID handling patterns, and overall call handling time.
Benefits of measuring call wrap time
Measuring call wrap time helps improve:
- Accuracy of service records
- Consistency across agents
- Performance improvement initiatives
- First call resolution
- Customer experience and CSAT scores
- Time spent on call history reviews
- Identification of training gaps
- Reduction of workplace stress by preventing overload
Analytics such as speech analytics suites, call monitoring software, sentiment analysis and live feed insights support leaders in understanding where ACW can be reduced without harming quality.
Key elements of ACW
ACW generally includes:
- Documenting customer concerns
- Updating call logs
- Selecting activity codes
- Saving call notes
- Tagging topics or categories
- Reviewing knowledge base items used during the call
- Scheduling follow-ups
- Sending confirmation messages
- Updating service desk or CRM system records
CRM integration helps centralise this data, and tools connected through Microsoft Teams integration often support smooth transitions between calls and follow-up tasks.
Benefits of measuring After-Call Work
Tracking ACW helps organisations identify operational patterns, workflow gaps and accuracy issues across customer service functions. It assists in understanding missed call actions, call wrap-up time, and how often agents rely on reusable templates or knowledge base content. Accurate insights support more efficient scheduling, improved performance, and lower service costs.
Some environments, including not-for-profit organisations, higher education support teams, and business process outsourcers, depend heavily on precise documentation due to a wide range of inquiry types and service expectations.
5 tips to reduce After-Call Work in call centres
Reducing ACW improves efficiency and gives agents more time to focus on customer interactions. Useful strategies include:
- Use automation where possible
Automation tools such as AI-powered agent support can assist with call summaries, tagging and sentiment extraction. This reduces manual typing and speeds up workflows. - Strengthen the knowledge base structure
Clear navigation and updated content help agents find information during the call, reducing wrap-up effort and avoiding repeated searches. - Reduce system switching
Integrated tools remove the need for agents to move between multiple platforms, improving speed and reducing human error. - Improve training and coaching
Targeted coaching supported by workforce optimisation tools helps agents manage ACW consistently and confidently. - Streamline processes and templates
Consistent templates reduce confusion and shorten documentation time.
Industries dealing with sensitive data, such as financial services, often rely on secure payment systems to ensure compliance and privacy even during wrap-up tasks.
Conclusion
After-call work plays a major role in creating smooth customer interactions, accurate records and well-organised workflows. Understanding ACW helps organisations manage time better, improve customer satisfaction, and build more efficient service operations.
To explore how modern tools can support wrap-up processes across different environments, request a demo.
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