When you use Zendesk to support customers, a question that people commonly ask is “How long does it typically take for one of my agents to respond to a ticket after it’s first created?”
Zendesk Support records the time from when a ticket was created to the first public agent response. Zendesk Explore reads this value and makes it available in a metric named First reply time.
This article describes how first reply time works and how you can use it in your reports.
This article contains the following sections:
Related article:
How first reply time is calculated
The Zendesk first reply time metric measures the time between ticket creation and the first public agent comment after that.
After the first public reply, the system calculates the first reply time in calendar hours and business hours. Both metrics are stored with the ticket data, so you can use either (or both) to build reports.
First reply time works essentially the same way regardless of the channel from which the ticket originated. For example:
- A customer email creates a ticket. Timing starts when the ticket is created and ends at the first public agent comment.
- An agent creates a ticket. Timing starts when the ticket is created and ends at the agent's next public comment.
- An agent takes a phone call that creates a ticket and solves the ticket with no new comment. The customer later re-opens the ticket, and the agent then responds with a public comment. First reply time ends when that comment is posted.
When an agent adds a public comment from another account using ticket sharing, this doesn't count toward your account's first reply time.
Additional details for messaging and live chat first reply time
First reply time is calculated exclusively based on agent replies. That means automated or bot-related actions in conversations aren’t considered when calculating the first reply time. Across all channels, ticket creation starts the first reply timer. Live conversation channels are no exception. However, because public replies aren’t an agent response option for live chat and messaging tickets, the actions that stop the timer are different:
-
On messaging tickets, the timer stops
when the agent clicks Send on their first
Messaging reply to the conversation.
-
On live chat tickets with reply-time SLAs
turned on, the timer stops when the agent
clicks Send on their first comment in the
conversation.
Messaging and live chat tickets also have an additional metric: First reply time (sec). This metric is often a more accurate measure of first reply times for tickets from live conversations, which tend to move more quickly than tickets from other channels. Unlike the standard First reply time metrics, the First reply time (sec) metric ignores your messaging business hours and live chat operating hours settings.
Reporting first reply time
The following sections describe how to use the Zendesk reporting tools to read first reply time information.
Reporting using Explore
Explore reads first reply time information from Support. The reports:
- Read data from Support using the Zendesk API. They do not calculate calendar hours or business hours.
- Display information on pre-built reports in calendar hours. However, metrics for business hours are available and can be used in your own reports.
See Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support, Metrics and attributes for Zendesk messaging, and Metrics and attributes for live chat.
Reporting using External analytic tools
If you're not using any Zendesk reporting methods, you can still read first reply time information using the Zendesk API. The first reply time information in calendar hours is stored together with the first reply time in business hours and clearly labelled. See API metrics documentation.
Reporting using the legacy Reporting Overview
The legacy Reporting Overview is not available if your plan includes Zendesk Explore.
The reporting overview can:
- Display the first reply time metric directly from Zendesk Support
- Display calendar hours only; business hours are not displayed
- Display average reply time for all tickets
Zendesk SLAs and first reply time
A service level agreement, or SLA, is a policy you define that specifies and measures the response and resolution times that your support team delivers to your customers. To determine these times, your SLA policies may also use the first reply time metric.
However, there are differences in the way that the first reply time metric work with SLAs:
- If a ticket is created with a public comment from an agent, the SLA first reply time target is not run.
- If a ticket is created with a private comment, the SLA
first reply time target will not start until the ticket gets
a first public comment from an end user.
An exception to this rule is that if the requester is a light agent, the first reply time SLA target starts at creation even without a public comment.
- SLA first reply time targets are fulfilled when a ticket is solved, even if the ticket never had a public comment from an agent.
- SLA targets can be run in calendar or business hours, but not both.
- Business hour SLA targets pause outside business hours, then restart when business hours begin.
For more information, see Defining SLA policies.
66 comments
Yannick Berkhout
Hi Zendesk,
We use ZD Explore reports to look into some metrics during evaluations with our customers. With one graphic we look into the First reply time.
I am quoting this article: "An agent creates a ticket.Timing starts when the ticket is created and ends at the agent's next public comment."
This means that when we create a ticket, we depend on the reply time of the customer for this metric. Because logically, we reply after the customer replies.
Could you help me with setting up a custom attribute, which is in case of an agent creating a ticket, only starts counting after the first public reply of the customer?
Thanks in advance :)
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Gab Guinto
You can try building a custom attribute using the earliest date functions (Working with earliest and latest date functions). You can create a metric with the date_diff function to get the duration between ticket creation timestamp and that first end user reply timestamp, and then subtract that metric value from the ticket's first reply time. That should give you the from the end user's first comment and the agent's second public comment.
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Tendai Rioga
Is there a way to create a report that can get timestamps on tickets when they are escalated from team to team ?
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Gab Guinto
You may be able to achieve this through custom metrics and attributes. Here's a recipe that you can use as guide: Tracking ticket assigns across groups. You can slice the data by Update - Timestamp, or you can create attributes using a similar that returns the Update - Date or Timestamp.
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Luciano
Hello ZendeskTeam,
Is there any way to set ticket time frames?
By this I mean that On-Hold and Pending tickets reappear as Open ticket to the assigned agent after a set time frame?
It happens that when there are many OnHold or Pending tickets, some go down.
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Elaine
Hi Luciano,
It looks like you're trying to see the time a ticket spends on certain ticket statuses (On-hold, Pending, Open). You can use this Explore recipe: Reporting on the duration of fields - Calculating the average time a ticket is in each status through its lifecycle to track these timeframes.
I hope this helps! Stay safe!
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Jen C.
Hi Zendesk,
This article states, "An agent creates a ticket. Timing starts when the ticket is created and ends at the agent's next public comment."
We are trying to track when an agent (requestor) from one team creates a ticket that is for another team to solve. Once the ticket is assigned to an agent from team and they respond via public comment, is "first to reply" tracking how long it took for the assigned agent to respond to the agent who created the ticket?
My specific team is fairly new to ZD so trying to build out our processes and reporting. Thank you!
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Gab Guinto
In that scenario, the First reply time will be the duration between the first two agent comments. Note that Zendesk will record the FRT once a second public comment was added by an admin or an agent; if for some reason, the requester who is also an agent adds a second comment, then that will be considered the 'First reply'.
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Amos Chen
I have omnichannel routing turned on and would love to track an FRT once a ticket has been assigned? Context for this is that we always have a backlog of emails, and sometimes emails won't get responded to until 24-48 hours later. However I want to track how long they sit in my analysts' open queue before they respond. Please let me know if this is possible or not
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Gab Guinto
You can try subtracting the value of First assignment time from the First reply time metric. This should give you the duration from initial assignment to the first response from the agent.
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MuseScore Support
Hi experts. I have a question: can an auto-reply work as the first public agent comment?
We have a trigger which sends auto-replies to specific type of tickets. I am curious if we add an action to the trigger to Solve tickets after sending the auto-reply, will this affect the first reply time metric.
Thanks.
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Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi MuseScore Support welcome to our Community! :)
The First reply time metric is calculated from the time between when a ticket was created to the time the first public comment is sent from an agent profile. Trigger notifications are not added as comments to the ticket so they should not affect your FRT.
I hope this clarifies your concern! :)
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Magan Bhandari
How can I create a query for first resolution date in zendesk.
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Zsa Trias
Hello Magan,
I have found this recipe that would allow you to create a "First reply date".
Reference: Explore recipe: Creating a ticket first reply date attribute
You can just alter the formula to use the "First resolution time" instead of "First reply time" so that the outcome would display the "First resolution - date".
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Permanently deleted user
This doesn't make sense to me. If a ticket is created by full Agent as private and then converted to public, the SLA first reply time should still not be applicable. The behavior should be consistent for full Agents regardless of whether the ticket starts as private or internal.
For tickets created by light Agents, it does make sense to apply the first reply time SLA to ensure the full Agents get to it within a timely manner.
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Ronald
This seems like a dumb question but that won't stop me - How do I create a report for reply times, inclusive of all agent replies, not just first reply time?
I'm not only interested in first reply time average/median but also average reply time for all replies. I was expecting this to be a default metric but the only reply time metrics I can find are "first reply time". It seems like I have to create a custom calculated metric for this? Any guidance would be appreciate.
0
Fran
In the case you highlight, if a ticket is created with a private comment, but has an end user as the requester, it is expected that the end user would reply or add some information to the ticket, thus making the first reply time relevant. Otherwise, you could keep either the agent that posted the private comment as the requester or add another agent as requester instead of the end user.
Hope this sheds some light on this topic!
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Gabriele Sannicandro
Hello.
I want to know if the SLA first reply time run, when ticket is created from BOT (flow builder).
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Rihab Bannour
Hello, Experts!
I was wondering if you could assist me in creating a new customized metric. This metric should calculate the First Response Time (FRT) based on the moment a ticket is assigned to an agent rather than when it was initially created. We would like to extract the FRT for each agent based on when tickets were assigned to them upon to the moment they sent the first reply to the customer.Is this feasible to implement?
Thank you.
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Larry Barker
This article says, "An agent creates a ticket. Timing starts when the ticket is created and ends at the agent's next public comment."
Does this mean that if an agent creates a ticket and sends a public reply as part of the ticket creation process, the "first reply time" clock will keep ticking until they send a second email?
One group in our org does this frequently, so I'm just trying to understand the impact on first reply time (and other downstream metrics) for that group.
1
Monica Turley
@Larry Barker, For several years now, we have found that if we {agent} create a ticket and only have the first comment as the public reply with nothing else, yes, the clock continues to tick for FRT. To work around this, our agents submit the first response as public without a Requester, then we copy and paste the details a second time and submit a second time with the Requester added. This way it stops the clock with the '2nd' submit, which is actually the '1st' response, but it's really only the first email the customer gets. It's not ideal, as the customer's email will show the message sent twice in the email thread, but they do not get the email twice and it stops the clock for FRT purposes. This method also increase our reporting for agent touches, as technically they are touching each of these self created tickets twice instead of just once to send the message, but we've learned to account for that.
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Pedro Rodrigues
Ronald here's a community tip with a method to calculate Next Reply Time for async channels by leveraging Support and Explore. Hope it helps!
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Kathryn Quinn
I recently noticed in Explore that a lot of our Zendesk tickets that show up in the First Resolution Drill Down don't show up in the First Reply drill down for the same time period, and same channel. Is there a reason, if a customer created the ticket, that a first reply time would not be recorded?
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Alex Zheng
You can have a resolution time value without a first reply time value if you are in a situation where you are solving out the ticket without leaving a public agent comment. This causes the first reply time to be null while the resolution time still exists.
0
Permanently deleted user
About this:
How can we create new calculated metrics to calculate the FRT from the first ticket replied by the customer until the ticket was answered by the agent (2nd public reply by agent)?
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James G
It seems like the Next Reply Time SLA metric would be appropriate for this particular situation. However, if you're attempting to manually calculate a custom metric, it won't be possible at this time. In order to determine the time between the customer's first ticket reply and the agent's next public comment, you'll need custom attributes that can return the relevant timestamps. Then, you can calculate the time difference between them. Unfortunately, calculating two custom timestamps isn't currently allowed, making it impossible to achieve this goal. Here's some feedback you might find helpful: DATE_DIFF() Between 2 Custom Attributes
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Manthan Bhosale
Is there any way to run the first reply time for tickets created by agents?
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Gab
Assuming you are an administrator or have access to Zendesk Explore with the necessary permissions, here’s how you can run this report:
Once you run this report, Zendesk Explore will display the average first reply time for tickets where the submitter role is 'Agent', thereby giving you insights into the response times for tickets created by your agents.
Remember that every Zendesk setup can be slightly different based on the custom fields, tags, or roles you have. Always consider the specific configurations of your instance when building reports in Zendesk Explore.
Similar report can be found here: Explore recipe: Reporting on first reply time
I hope this helps.
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Manthan Bhosale
Hi Gab,
Thanks for replying, I want first reply time to be shown in SLA badge for tickets created by agents. Or anything like that so agents can know they have to respond to that ticket before SLA breach. As of now Zendesk says that first reply time is not applicable for tickets created by agents. So any alternative to show first reply time in badge?
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Gab
I'm afraid it is not possible to create a true First reply time SLA on agent-created tickets. Depending on how the ticket is created, the target will either not activate or will behave differently.
Take a look at this article for your reference: Defining SLA policies.
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