Insights recipe: Inbound Calls by Wait Time

Zendesk Explore, our new analytics software, is replacing Insights. Most customers who purchased Zendesk Support after July 2018, or have been migrated to Explore don’t have access to Insights. You can find Explore in the Zendesk product tray.

This recipe will help you create a report to measure inbound or answered calls by associated wait time or SLA purposes. For more information on reporting on Zendesk Talk using Insights, see Analyzing call data with Insights (Professional and Enterprise). 

Skill Level: Advanced

Time Required: 10-20 minutes

 Ingredients:

• Three custom metrics
• Three additional percentage custom metrics
• One custom report 

This article contains the following sections:

• Creating your custom metrics
• Creating and customizing your report
• Adding percentage calculations (Optional)
• Reordering and relabeling metrics

Creating your custom metrics

The first step for analyzing your inbound calls by wait time data is to create custom metrics that show the number of calls falling into each SLA bucket. You will need to create three custom metrics, based on your different SLA times. 

To create your custom metrics

1. Click the Reporting icon (  ) in the agent interface, then open the Insights tab.
2. Click the GoodData link in the top right corner.
3. Click Reports > Create Report.
4. In the What panel, click the (advanced) link next to Add new metric. 
5. Select Custom metric. 
6. Name your first custom metric Inbound Wait Time < 10, then type the formula listed below:
   Note: You cannot directly enter the formula. You must select the colored elements from the Elements panel, then click Add selected. 

   SELECT COUNT(Call, Records of Calls) WHERE Call Direction = inbound AND (SELECT SUM (Call Wait Time) BY Call) < 10

   • Call, Records of Calls, and Call Direction are located in Attributes under Calls. 
   • inbound is located in Attribute Values  > Calls, then select Call Direction. 
   • Call Wait Time is located in Facts under Calls. 
7. Click Add when finished. 
8. Create your second custom metric, Inbound 10 <= Wait Time <=30, using the formula below:

   SELECT COUNT(Call, Records of Calls) WHERE Call Direction = inbound AND (SELECT SUM (Call Wait Time) BY Call) BETWEEN 10 AND 30

9. Click Add. 
10. Create your third custom metric, Inbound Wait Time>30, using the formula below: 

    SELECT COUNT(Call, Records of Calls) WHERE Call Direction = inbound AND (SELECT SUM (Call Wait Time) BY Call) > 30

11. Click Add. 

 

Creating and customizing your report

After you create your custom metrics, you can then add them to your report. To analyze the percentage for each time bucket, you will need to customize your report. For more information on building custom Insights reports, see Building custom reports in Insights. 

Creating your report

This section will instruct you on how to add your custom metrics to your report. 

To add metrics to your report

1. In your report, click the What panel. 
2. Select your metrics. 
3. Open the How panel, and select any attributes to slice your results. 
4. Click Done. Your report will resemble the image below:

   

Adding data labels

This section will instruct you on how to add data labels to your report, so you can view the exact results for each section. If you want to view the results as percentages, you will need to change the chart type to a pie chart or create new custom metrics for calculating percentages (see Adding percentage calculations).

To add data labels to your report

1. Click Show Configuration in the upper-right. 
2. Click the + button next to Global Settings under Advanced Configuration. 

   

3. Check the Data Labels box. 
4. Click Apply.

To add percentage data labels

1. Select the pie chart option from the chart list at the top of the page. It is not possible to show percentages with a bar chart without creating custom percentage metrics.
2. Under Show Configuration > Advanced Configuration > Global Settings, check the Data Labels box. 
3. Under the Size drop-down list, check the As % box. 
4. Click Apply. 

Adding percentage calculations (Optional)

If you would like to view your results as percentages in different chart type than pie, you will need to create additional custom metrics. You will need to create the custom metrics described in the Creating custom metrics section above before creating these metrics. 

Additionally, you will need to edit the metric format to include the percentage symbol. This section will instruct you on how to perform both steps. 

To create your percentage calculation metrics

1. Follow the steps from the Creating your custom metrics section to navigate to the Custom metric editor. 
2. Enter the formula below for your first custom metric:  

   SELECT Inbound Wait Time < 10 / # inbound Calls

   • Inbound Wait Time < 10 is a custom metric you previously created and can be found in Metrics under Unsorted, unless you have selected another folder for your custom metrics. 
   • # inbound Calls can be found in Metrics under Calls. 
3. Click Add, then create your second custom metric, using the formula below:  SELECT Inbound 10 <= Wait Time <= 30 / # inbound Calls

   

4. Click Add, then create your third custom metric, using the formula below: 
   SELECT Inbound Wait Time > 30 / # inbound Calls
5. Click Apply. 

These metrics will not automatically render as percentages. You will need to follow the steps below to change the format to percentage.

To change the metric format

1. Select one of your custom metrics created above. 
2. In the Details panel, click the Edit button in the Metric format box.
3. Replace the current number format with "##0%".
4. Click Apply. 

You can use these metrics to view percentage results on any chart type. If you want to show the percentage number, check the Data labels box under Show Configuration > Advanced Configuration > Data Labels. 

Your report should resemble the image below:

 

Reordering and relabeling metrics

There are additional steps you can take to increase the readability of your report. While names like "% Inbound 10 <=Wait <=30" are descriptive in your metrics page, it could be difficult to interpret when looking at the report. 

To change a metric label

1. Select the table chart type. 
2. Double click the metric header you want to relabel.

   

3. Type the new metric name, then press enter.
4. Select your original chart type.

Before finishing your report, you'll want to ensure the metrics are displaying in the correct order. 

To change the order of your metrics

1. Select the table chart type. 
2. Drag-and-drop the metric headers into their new order. 
3. Select your original chart type.