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Adjusted Handling Time gives you a more accurate picture of how long teammates actually spend working on conversations. Unlike traditional handling time, which counts all time from when a conversation is assigned to when it's closed, including periods of inactivity, Adjusted Handling Time tracks only the moments a teammate is genuinely engaged.
The clock starts when a teammate opens an assigned conversation in the browser, and pauses when they switch to another conversation, or when the conversation is snoozed, reassigned, or closed. It also pauses if the teammate becomes inactive and is automatically set to away.
How it works
The clock starts when a teammate opens a conversation in their Inbox and keeps running until one of the following happens: they switch to another conversation, the conversation is snoozed, closed, or reassigned, or they go auto-away due to inactivity. Only the time the teammate is actively present in the conversation counts.
A typical scenario
A teammate handling their morning queue:
This results in the first conversation logging 10 minutes of handling time (9:02→9:08 + 9:12→9:18).
What counts as handling time
The clock runs whenever the conversation is the active conversation in the teammate's Inbox — including when:
The clock pauses when:
Auto-away
If a teammate is inactive and gets automatically set to away, the clock pauses on their active conversation. Auto-away pausing is configurable in Settings and is disabled by default. This can be enabled in Settings > Assignments if needed.
Reporting
Adjusted Handling Time is available in custom reports alongside standard handling time metrics. All standard reporting capabilities — filtering, segmentation, CSV exports, charts, and aggregations — work with these metrics.
API
Adjusted handling time in the Conversation API
If you're building a custom integration or need to pull handling time data programmatically, the GET /conversations/:id endpoint includes adjusted_handling_time in the statistics object.
Values are in seconds. When there's no idle time, adjusted_handling_time equals handling_time. This field is only populated once the conversation is closed.
Handling events endpoint
GET /conversations/:id/handling_events returns the full list of pause and resume events for a conversation. This endpoint is useful if you need to monitor handling activity in real time, run custom handling time calculations, or build analytics beyond what the adjusted metric provides. It can be called at any point during a conversation's lifetime — not just after it's closed.
Each event includes the teammate, event type (paused or resumed), timestamp, and — for pause events — a reason.
Pause reasons:
Troubleshooting
Adjusted Handling Time is tracked from the browser. In the vast majority of cases this is accurate, but events may occasionally be dropped in rare scenarios — such as an unexpected browser shutdown, laptop memory wipe, or lost internet connection. When this happens, the metric automatically falls back to traditional handling time so you're never left without a value.
Conversations created before the workspace opt-in date do not have handling events. Allow new conversations to collect events before expecting accurate metrics.
FAQs
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