Category: AHT

Average Handling Time (AHT)

Average Handling Time (AHT) is a key operational metric used in content moderation and Trust & Safety teams to measure the average time a moderator spends reviewing a task from start to finish. This includes content review, policy evaluation, decision-making, escalation handling, and submitting the final action.

AHT helps operations teams understand productivity, workflow efficiency, and queue management performance. Different moderation workflows may have different AHT expectations depending on content complexity. For example, reviewing a simple text comment may take only a few seconds, while livestream reviews, storyboard images, or complex escalation cases may require much longer review times.

Maintaining the right balance between AHT and accuracy is one of the biggest challenges in moderation operations. Extremely low handling time can increase the risk of missed violations or incorrect decisions, while very high handling time may impact SLA targets and queue health.

Several factors can affect AHT, including:

• content complexity
• policy changes
• unclear violations
• escalation requirements
• reviewer experience
• system or tool limitations

At TOSFirst, we explore how AHT impacts moderation quality, reviewer performance, operational efficiency, SLA management, and the daily challenges faced by Trust & Safety teams.