ASA (Average Speed of Answer)

ASA is the mean wait from a contact joining the queue to an agent picking it up. It is a real-time operational health signal that sits alongside service level — where service level is a percentage-within-threshold, ASA is the average wait experienced.

The formula is total queue wait time divided by the number of answered contacts.

What it hides: as an average, ASA is dragged around by outliers and can look fine while a meaningful minority wait far too long — which is exactly why service level (a percentile-style view) usually complements it. ASA also ignores abandoned contacts entirely, so a good average can mask people who left before it was ever measured.