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Using the metrics that matter to improve customer support

Rob Stack
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Zendesk Documentation Team

Explore is a great resource for analyzing your entire customer service experience. You can use it to see areas where you are exceeding expectations or areas that might need some work.

In this article, you'll learn about some of the metrics that matter when you want to run a successful support team. You'll find out why these metrics are important, how you can see them in your Explore reports, and how to learn from them to improve the effectiveness of your team, and your customer support.

This article contains the following sections:

How many tickets are we solving?

The number of tickets solved is a useful metric that gives a quick indication as to how your team is doing. It is most useful for examining trends as some tickets are quickly solved while others take longer. Examining this metric over time will help you to evaluate your team's performance and decide your resourcing needs.

Viewing pre-built reports (Lite and Professional)

The Tickets tab tab of the Zendesk Support dashboard gives you all the information you need to know about solved, unsolved, created, and reopened tickets.

Creating your own reports (Professional)

You'll find the metrics and attributes you need to create your own reports in the Support: Tickets dataset. To review these metrics and attributes, see the Tickets dataset section of Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support.

We have a great selection of Explore recipes to help you get started creating reports about your ticket solves including:

For a full list of recipes, see Zendesk Explore recipes reference.

What to look for

The Tickets tab contains many reports that help you understand your support team. In particular, look for the following reports:

  • Look at the tickets solved metric for both the whole team, and individual agents.
  • Look at average values over a period (for example, a month). Some days, agents will be over or under the target.
  • Compare solved tickets with the number of open tickets. This will show you how well the team is keeping up with the ticket queue.

How to use the results

The following table gives some examples of how you can use the ticket solved metric to help you improve your team's efficiency:

If you see this Do this
Ticket volumes are consistently high
  • Consider hiring more agents. Look for patterns of particularly busy or quiet times and staff accordingly.
  • Consider more training for your agents.
  • Look for common problem areas in tickets. Meet with product managers to see if product could be improved. Consider setting up an "About" field (see What are the most common ticket areas?).
  • Consider setting up a knowledge base to enable customers to serve themselves.
Ticket volumes are consistently low
  • You might be able to reduce your number of agents.
Some agents have low solve rates
  • Check which tickets the agent has been working on. They could be particularly time consuming problems.
  • If an agent has a consistently low solve rate, they might require more product training.

What are the most common ticket areas?

Feedback from customers helps you improve your products and your customers experiences. You can take advantage of this feedback by categorizing your support requests into product areas. Then, you can immediately see the products that generate the most support issues.

You might be wondering "Why doesn't Zendesk add a category field to each ticket?" Because every business is different, and we want you to be able to customize this field however you want.

You add a category field by adding a custom ticket field in Support. This can contain as many items as you want, and you can call the field what you want. At Zendesk, we call our category field the About field. In this example, the field is called "Product" and contains three products.

With that information, you can categorize support requests and drill in deeper to discover valuable insights about your product and support.

You can read more about custom ticket fields, see Adding custom fields to your tickets and support request form.

To find out more about how Zendesk uses the "About" field, see The 'About' Field.

Viewing pre-built reports

Explore currently doesn't include your custom field on the pre-built dashboards. However, you can report on custom ticket fields in Explore Professional.

Creating your own reports (Professional)

The Support: Tickets dataset reads your custom field as an attribute. You'll find it in Ticket custom fields > customfieldname.

To create a report showing which areas have the most tickets

  1. In Explore, create a new query using the Support: Tickets dataset.
  2. Add Tickets > Tickets to the Metrics panel.
  3. Add Ticket custom fields > customfieldname to the Rows panel.

    customfieldname is the name of the custom field you created to categorize your tickets.

We have a great Explore recipe to help you get started creating reports about custom fields:

What to look for

The category field can help you learn valuable information about your business and to identify areas of the product that could be improved. The key metrics to look at include:

  • Compare data from the custom field to overall ticket volume and resolution time.
  • The average time it takes to solve a ticket in each area.
  • The average CSAT ratings for tickets in each area.

How to use the results

The following table gives some examples of how the category metric can help you improve the your customer support:

If you see this Do this
One category generates significantly more tickets than others
  • Work with product teams to identify if the product could be improved in that category.
  • Create a knowledge base with information to help customers use the product in that category.
Many tickets are not assigned to a category
  • Train your agents to categorize tickets by selecting from the list of predefined categories.
  • Make the category field mandatory, meaning a category must be chosen before you can proceed.
  • Add the field to your support request form so your customers can choose the relevant category when they submit a support request.

How much work do we have?

Your ticket backlog provides a general pulse to the health of your support team. Ticket backlog is defined as all tickets currently in a new, open, pending, or on-hold state. In other words, it's your unsolved tickets that need work done on them.

This is an important metric to watch because it provides insight into your incoming ticket volume and how well you keep up given your resources.

Viewing pre-built reports (Lite and Professional)

The Backlog tab of Explore's Zendesk Support dashboard includes pre-built reports that measure your ticket backlog. You can group these by brand, channel, group, type, and more.

Creating your own reports (Professional)

You'll find the metrics and attributes you need to create backlog reports in the Support: Backlog history dataset. To review these metrics and attributes, see the Backlog history dataset section of Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support.

We have some great Explore recipes to help you get started creating reports about your ticket backlog including:

What to look for

  • Cross-reference ticket backlog volume with ticket age and first-reply time. A large backlog is not necessarily a bad thing if your team is capable of a high throughput.
  • Look at the historical backlog for trends. For example, what are your busiest months? Which of your agents are performing the best?
  • Speed is important, but not at the expense of quality. Sometimes, support issues take longer to solve than the customer expects or longer than the performance targets you’ve set for your team. However, the longer it takes to solve a customer’s issue, the more likely customer satisfaction will suffer.
  • Look at the ticket priority as well as its status. A large backlog is bad, but one with a large number of high-priority tickets is worse.
  • Look for multiple support requests from the same customer in the same, or in different categories.

How to use the results

The following table gives some examples of how examining your ticket backlog can help you improve your customer support:

If you see this Do this
Your backlog is too big
  • This means that customers are waiting longer for help. Your team can help by keeping the customer informed about the status and progress of their request.
  • Are a lot of tickets in a pending state waiting for a customer response? Consider creating an automation to remind the customer of the pending status of their issue. If they don’t respond after a set number of days you can automatically resolve the ticket to remove it from the backlog. For an example, see Zendesk on Zendesk: Bump Bump Solve.
  • A backlog consists of both unassigned tickets and assigned tickets that have not yet been solved. The two combined equals your total ticket backlog. Try to ensure that tickets are assigned to someone as quickly as possible.
You have a lot of high priority tickets in your backlog
  • Consider creating a trigger that escalates high priority tickets to make them visible more quickly. For more information, see Creating triggers for automatic ticket updates and notifications.
  • Make sure to triage incoming tickets from customers to ensure they have set the priority field appropriately.
  • Make sure that your agents are not setting the priority field incorrectly. If so, they might need further training in how to categorize requests.
You see multiple support requests from the same customer in the same category
  • Engage directly with the customer to find out what's wrong.
You get multiple support requests from different customers for the same problem
  • Consider writing a knowledge base article.
  • Engage with the community in your knowledge base.
  • Talk to your product development team. Could a product redesign help to stop problems?

How long do customers wait for a first reply?

First-reply time (FRT) is the amount of time from when a ticket is created to when an agent makes the first reply to the customer. In other words, it measures how long it takes a real human, not an automated reply, to contact the customer. First-reply time is a good indicator of the efficiency of your team and how well they hold up in handling fluctuating incoming ticket volumes.

Your performance target for this metric should align with your industry and customer expectations for first-reply times. For example, you might use:

  • 24 hours for support requests submitted using email and online forms.
  • 60 minutes for requests submitted using social media.

Of course, exceeding these expectations is even better from the customer’s perspective.

Viewing pre-built reports (Lite and Professional)

The Efficiency tab of Explore's Zendesk Support dashboard includes pre-built reports that measure your first reply time. You can group these by brand, channel, group, type, and more.

Creating your own reports (Professional)

You'll find the metrics and attributes you need to create efficiency reports in the Support: Tickets dataset. To review these metrics and attributes, see the Tickets dataset section of Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support.

We have some great Explore recipes to help you get started creating reports about your first reply times including:

What to look for

Things to look for include:

  • Look at your ticket volume whenever your first-reply time changes. A change might correspond with a temporary change in ticket volume. Start by looking at the Tickets and Efficiency tabs in Explore's Zendesk Support dashboard. If you had a temporary surge from a new product launch or a major service incident, then this might not be a sign of a worrying trend. If you can predict these surges, that's a great time to bring a bit of extra help on board.
  • If your first-reply time is 24 hours on email-submitted requests and your median number of agent interactions is eight per ticket, then your average reply time median should be 4 hours or less. Looking at tickets with an average reply time greater than 4 hours should highlight opportunities for improving agent performance (such as training or adding self-service documentation to your knowledge base).
  • What are your customers telling you about your reply time? Look at your CSAT ratings and comments.
  • Monitor first-reply time for each of your support channels to ensure that expectations are being met.
  • Monitoring first-reply time by product area if you are using a custom field as described earlier in this article (see What are the most common ticket areas?).
  • Monitoring average reply time. This is the average amount of time for all replies to the customer when solving a support request.

How to use the results

The following table gives some examples of how examining your first response times can help you improve your customer support:

If you see this Do this
First reply times are high
  • If you're customers serve themselves, then you don't need to worry about first-reply times! Set up a knowledge base and write articles that address your top customer pain points. Stay present in your knowledge base and always answer questions from customers.
  • Look at when you get most of your tickets? An Explore report using the Tickets metric and the Ticket created - Hour attribute is a quick way to help you make sure that you have support online and ready to go when your customers are.
  • However quickly your team solves emailed tickets, sometimes live channels like Zendesk Chat and Talk can be a faster way for customers to get help and for you to solve tickets.
  • When something goes wrong, it's critical to find and address the issue as quickly as possible. Letting customers know you're aware and working on a problem is key to turning a bad situation into a good interaction with your company.

How long do tickets take to resolve?

Resolution time is not just important to you and your team. Customers also want their problems solved quickly. There are several key metrics that indicate how long it takes for agents to resolve issues including:

  • Resolution time: The time it takes for a support issue to be solved. A ticket might get solved more than once because it can be reopened before it’s closed. The time it took to solve the issue the first time is called first-resolution time.
  • Full resolution time: The time it took to finally solve the ticket.
  • Agent replies: The number of replies it takes for your agents to solve the ticket. The faster you can solve a ticket, the happier the customer will be.
  • One-touch resolution: Support issues that were resolved in a single interaction such as a call, a ticket reply, or a live chat. This has a positive impact on customer satisfaction and helps reduce support costs.

Viewing pre-built reports (Lite and Professional)

You'll find useful pre-built reports that measure how long your tickets take to solve on the Efficiency tab of the Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard. You can group these reports by brand, channel, group, type, and more.

Creating your own reports (Professional)

You'll find the metrics and attributes you need to report on your efficiency in the Support: Tickets dataset. To review these metrics and attributes, see the Tickets dataset section of Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support.

We have some great Explore recipes to help you get started creating reports about your full resolution times including:

What to look for

Metrics that can help you understand the time and effort that went into solving a ticket include:

  • Handle time: The time that an agent spends working on a single support interaction. In Zendesk Support, handle time is captured using the Time Tracking app. Explore can report on this data using the custom fields Total time spent, Avg time spent per ticket, and Avg time spent per update.. For details, see Time Tracking app: metrics you need to be measuring.
  • Agent touches: An update an agent makes to a ticket. This includes changes of ticket status, adding comments, and others. With Explore, you can report on agent touches using the Agent replies distribution metrics.
  • Requester wait time: The time a customer waits for their issue to be resolved. This is the time that a ticket spends in the New, Open, and On-hold status. During these periods, it’s the support team’s responsibility to work out a resolution for the issue. It's a good indicator of the customer’s experience of the support interaction.

How to use the results

The following table gives some examples of how examining your full resolution times can help you improve your customer support:

If you see this Do this
Tickets are taking too long to resolve
  • This has a direct effect on customer satisfaction: People don’t want to wait a long time to have their problems resolved. However, focusing solely on resolution time isn’t necessarily a good idea. Speed doesn’t always equal quality.
  • In addition to resolution time, finding the actual time that the agent spent resolving the issue is important. Total resolution time doesn’t do that because it includes stages in the ticket lifecycle when the agent isn’t working on it. For example, when it’s sent back to the customer for information and put in a Pending status.
You have a high proportion of one-touch resolution tickets
  • This might indicate that you have lots of low-complexity support issues that could be better handled with self-service. Agents should work on more complex issues, not those that a customer can easily solve on their own by reading FAQs.
Tickets have a high proportion of agent touches
  • This might indicate that the agent needs more training because it takes them more touches than the team average to solve tickets.

How often are solved tickets reopened?

A reopen occurs when a ticket's status is changed from Solved back to Open.

When tickets are reopened, this might indicate that agents aren’t fully solving the customer’s support issues. This might be because agents are concentrating on first-contact resolutions and speed over quality. It’s good practice to routinely monitor your team’s ticket reopens.

Viewing pre-built reports (Lite and Professional)

The Tickets tab of the Zendesk Support dashboard contains the reports you'll need to monitor ticket reopens.

Creating your own reports (Professional)

You'll find the metrics and attributes you need to report about ticket reopens in the Support: Tickets dataset. To review these metrics and attributes, see the Tickets dataset section of Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support.

What to look for

  • Total number of reopens.
  • The average number of reopens.
  • The percentage of tickets with reopens.

How to use the results

The following table gives some examples of how examining your ticket reopens can help you improve your customer support:

If you see this Do this
The percentage of tickets being reopened is high
  • Is this an escalated issue? Ticket reopens are more likely when agents deal with more complex support issues so reopens might be higher for escalated tickets.
  • Are your agents sufficiently trained? They might not have sufficient knowledge to solve more complex problems.
  • Was there missing information in the ticket that caused the agent to misdiagnose the issue? Consider collecting more information in the customer ticket form if this is the case.

How satisfied are customers?

Every time you interact with a customer, consider measuring their satisfaction with a Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT), a short survey sent to the customer after their problem is solved.

Tracking CSAT helps you spot trends that may be affecting customer satisfaction. Satisfaction ratings are also key performance indicators for your agents because each rating received is associated with the agent who solved the customer’s problem. These can be averaged to give each agent an overall CSAT score.

At Zendesk, we simply ask if the interaction was good or bad. If customers want to give more feedback, they can add a comment.

Examples of metrics you can track include:

  • A customer’s CSAT rating over time
  • CSAT ratings, by channel, product or service
  • Average CSAT ratings for agents and teams

Viewing pre-built reports (Lite and Professional)

On the Satisfaction tab of the Zendesk Support dashboard, you'll find reports that help you analyze your customer satisfaction scores. You can group these reports by brand, channel, group, type, and more.

Creating your own reports (Professional)

You'll find the metrics and attributes you need to create your own customer satisfaction reports in the Support: Tickets dataset. To review these metrics and attributes, see the Tickets dataset section of Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support.

We have some great Explore recipes to help you get started creating reports about your customer satisfaction including:

What to look for

  • Compare ticket stats on bad tickets to those rated good.
  • Look for satisfaction ratings with comments.

How to use the results

The following table gives some examples of how examining your customer satisfaction can help you improve your customer support:

If you see this Do this
You get one or more bad ratings
  • If you get a bad rating, always ask what you could do better. You'll find some tips on how you can automate that process in Changing bad satisfaction ratings to good. Many bad ratings leave some form of open feedback. Read it, follow up, and turn it around.
  • Notify managers when you get feedback. You can automate this using a trigger to notify a manager or group of managers when a ticket receives a bad rating. Use the following two trigger conditions:
    • Ticket: Satisfaction > Changed to > Bad
    • Ticket: Satisfaction > Changed to > Bad with comment
  • Give your agents more information about your customers: Tickets with more touches often have a lower CSAT rating. Making more customer information available to your support teams with CRM integrations or custom user and organization fields can help your team know more about customers up front. If you can eliminate initial questions on tickets, that leads to faster resolution times and more one-touch ticket solves.
  • Did your agent provide inaccurate information or was there an issue with resolution time? Consider categorizing badly rated tickets based on the reasons why it seems the ticket was rated the way it was. If it's purely about ticket handling, resolution time, or workflow issues, then those are some great projects to work on going forward.

More resources

By focusing on the metrics that matter, both your organization and your customers will benefit. All of the reports you've learned about in this article can be used to help you avoid ongoing issues.

If you're new to Explore and want to learn the basics, read Getting started with Zendesk Explore.

For some great ideas to help you get started with reporting, check out our Explore recipes at Zendesk Explore recipes reference.

Finally, to see all of the Explore documentation, start with Zendesk Explore resources.

Join the conversation!

What tools do you use to help measure the success of your support organization? How have you managed to improve these metrics? Let us know in the comments below.

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