Why answer-seizure ratio lies to you

Answer-seizure ratio is the ratio of answered calls to attempted calls. It is easy to compute, easy to compare and easy to make look good — which is precisely the problem.

What ASR does not tell you

A route can answer a high proportion of calls and still be delivering a bad experience. False answer supervision returns an answer signal before anyone has picked up, so the call is billed from a point at which nothing is happening. ASR reads as excellent. The customer hears silence.

Short-duration answered calls are the tell. If a route's ASR is 62% but its mean call duration is eleven seconds, those calls are not conversations.

Metrics that survive contact with reality

• ACD alongside ASR. Neither number means much alone. Together they describe whether answered calls are real.
• Post-dial delay. Anything past four seconds and callers start hanging up before the far end rings.
• Short-call ratio. The share of answered calls under fifteen seconds, tracked per route, per day.

What we do about it

Every route carries all four figures in the portal, sampled per minute. Routes that drift on short-call ratio are pulled from the premium tier automatically, before anyone opens a ticket about it.

The point is not that ASR is useless. It is that a single number is an invitation to optimise the number instead of the outcome.