Key Help Desk Metrics Every IT Manager Should Track
Your help desk aims to deliver the best customer support it possibly can, but sometimes it is difficult to know if your agents are meeting the success your organization wants them to achieve. IT managers likely want to know how performance levels are faring and whether there is room for improvement.
Help desk metrics can provide a wealth of information regarding performance, customer satisfaction and common technical issues, to name a few. These figures can assist in helping IT managers with identifying what is going smoothly but also areas possibly needing changes, adjustments in procedures or just better optimization.
In this article, we’ll take a look at several key help desk metrics IT managers might find useful, what each metric measures, why these metrics matter and how to use the data you can extract to make informed decisions. Not every business will necessarily need to focus on every single metric; what is useful to you may vary depending on your organization’s business goals and maturity. Let’s dig in.
What are Help Desk Metrics?
Help desk metrics are measurements of how your customer support team is performing and how effectively they resolve issues. Your organizational decision makers can then take this information and identify important information, such as the following examples.
- See how well agents are meeting expectations
- Identify problems or areas declining in quality
- Recognize areas agents are excelling
- Reduce support costs
- Develop better documentation and workflows
- Decrease user support resolution times
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Provide agents with better IT support
Taking a deeper dive into quantifiable metrics relating to specific key areas can provide a lot of insight to IT managers, giving them the ability to make data-driven decisions for specific service processes.
10 Best Help Desk Metrics to Track
Every business is different, so what may be a vital metric to one organization will be less important to another. The following are 10 common customer support metrics businesses can leverage to set benchmarks and optimize the help desk experience for both internal and external customers.
1. First Response Time
First response time is the time elapsing between a support ticket submission and when the agent initially responds to the customer.
Businesses typically like to track this key metric because it demonstrates to customers how important they are to your organization. This figure can show whether there is a pattern of agents quickly reaching out to customers in response to their issue. Timely responses boost satisfaction levels and generally reflect well on your business. On the other hand, longer first response times show there is room for improvement because it could ultimately negatively impact internal or external user satisfaction.
First response metrics are tracked by taking the time difference between a support ticket submission and the time an agent first reaches out. For example, if a customer submits a ticket at 8 a.m. and the agent responds by 8:10, the First Response Time would be 10 minutes. It does not take resolution into account, only the first interaction.
2. Average Resolution Time
Average resolution time is an important metric because it highlights how long it takes your help desk support agents to fully resolve customer or employee issues.
Ideally, your organization wants resolution times to be as low as possible. Average resolution times can demonstrate whether your agents have the tools they need to fix issues or if they need improvements in how they handle issues.
The average resolution time metric is calculated by measuring the amount of time between a ticket being submitted to the help desk to when the agent can close the ticket as resolved.
3. First Contact Resolution Rate
First contact resolution rates track how often issues are solved during the initial interaction between the user and the agent. This metric is useful because you can extract tangible data to show how productive your team is at resolving issues. It can also identify “easy to solve” problems that can be converted to self-service support options.
The calculation of first contact resolution rates is done by measuring the total number of help desk issues resolved during the first contact and dividing it by the total support tickets received during that timeframe. For example, if your agents received 1,000 tickets in the month of April and 300 of them were resolved on first contact, the rate would be 30%, and you’d probably want to make some changes to improve. On the other hand, if 700 were resolved at initial contact, the rate would be 70% successful and quick resolutions.
4. Ticket Volume
Ticket volumes help gauge demand and spot spikes in support needs. This metric is a useful one because it demonstrates the frequency of how often users run into issues needing resolution.
This can highlight areas that need improvement but can also help your organization determine whether it needs to better its self-service options by adding an FAQ section or expanding on a knowledge base.
Another way the ticket volume is useful is that it can pinpoint trends and provide data-driven insight into seeing periods of an increase or decrease in activity.
This metric is measured by adding up the total number of tickets generated during specific timeframes (e.g., daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.)
5. Ticket Backlog
Metrics for ticket backlog can reveal whether your help desk team is keeping up or falling behind. Ideally, this figure should be at zero, but realistically, tickets can quickly accumulate if serious issues are occurring. It can also identify whether these issues are hindering your agents’ ability to resolve and close tickets in a timely manner.
By knowing how often tickets backlog can provide insight into whether you’re adequately staffed, have persistent issues users face or if the agents are not able to work as quickly as they should. Whatever the root problem, you can identify it and then provide a solution.
You can measure ticket backlog by totaling the number of tickets not resolved in a specific time period.
6. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
The goal of any organization is to achieve 100% customer satisfaction. Some succeed at getting close to it, others fall short. The customer satisfaction (CSAT) metric captures the end-user’s perception of service quality in regards to your help desk team.
This is a good metric to track because, even if your agents rapidly resolve tickets, it shows customers are not satisfied with the results. If the CSAT number is low, this empowers you to identify areas of improvement to increase customer satisfaction.
The CSAT can be measured by asking customers to rate their satisfaction level on a set scale. For example, ask them to rate from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest rating and 10 being the highest rating. Add up the number of satisfied customers (typically, those responding 8-10 would be the highest) and then divide by the total number of responses. If 100 customers respond and 80 of them rated an 8, 9 or 10,, this would give an 80% CSAT rate.
7. Technician Utilization
The technician utilization rate helps optimize agent workloads and identify high and low performers. This measures how long it takes an agent to respond to help desk tickets, the amount of time they spend talking to customers and the time spent on other tasks.
Businesses often like to track this metric because it aids in determining whether a help desk team is overwhelmed or if your company has too many agents. Managerial decision-makers can then rectify the issue by adding or decreasing the number of agents manning tickets.
8. Support Tickets Opened vs. Solved
The support tickets opened vs. solve metric is one that can help determine the success rate of your help desk team. Ideally, every ticket is resolved and closed, but realistically, this may not always happen.
This metric is a great way to compare how many tickets are resolved vs. how many were not. This way, an organization can glean good insight as to how many tickets still need a resolution. It can also help IT management determine if more staff should be hired or identify areas needing rectification to reach better efficiency levels.
To measure this metric, look at the total number of tickets opened in a designated timeframe and compare it against the total number of tickets resolved in the same period of time.
9. Service-Level Agreement Compliance
Service-level agreement (SLA) compliance is the number of resolved tickets that meet your organization’s SLA standards. Every company’s goal is to uphold their SLAs, and identifying any non-compliance will help improve support services and better meet expectations.
To calculate the SLA compliance rate, total up the number of tickets resolved that are SLA compliant and divide this figure by the total number of tickets generated.
10. Other Metrics of Value
There are a number of metrics that can also be highly useful for organizations:
- Transfer rate: Total number of calls needing to be transferred to another team.
- Escalation rate: Percentage of calls to the help desk transferred to a manager to handle frustrations, complications or issues agents cannot fix.
- Customer effort score (CES): Examines how much effort users have to make to get support; is it easy for them to reach help, or is it challenging?
- Cost per ticket: Examines how much, on average, it costs to resolve support tickets.
Wrap-Up
Leveraging help desk metrics can empower IT managers to monitor team performance, improve user satisfaction and identify areas for process improvement. There is no one-size-fits-all set of metrics organizations should use. However, the above provides a good overview of the most common help desk analytics that businesses tend to track.
Businesses should focus on the metrics that offer the best value. They may be related to quality of service, productivity, agent performance or financial in nature. While figures can be tracked manually, automated processes are a far easier way to calculate and track them. Not only does it save time, but it also removes potential manual errors.
Installing a help desk software solution can help your organization streamline processes, help it run more efficiently and allow IT managers to make data-driven decisions. Ultimately, it can help your business run more cost-effectively.
Want to Improve Your Help Desk Success? Red River Can Assist!
A successful support ticket is when the user is happy with the resolution. Collecting key help desk metrics is one method to determine the effectiveness of your agents. By identifying what is working and what might not be going so well, you can implement solutions or boost efforts in areas of success.
Enterprises that prioritize the customer and agent experience will see clear benefits, such as a good brand reputation, happier employees and greater customer satisfaction. Tracking key metrics enables organizations to have smarter resourcing, better SLAs, the ability to optimize resource management and provide continuous improvement — especially when supported by the right tools or ITSM partner.
Red River is fully equipped to help you get started with the tools you need to gain valuable insight into how well your help desk is operating. To schedule a consultation, call the experts at Red River today.
