Help Desk Metrics That Matter

Running a successful help desk requires tracking certain important metrics that will contribute to providing exceptional customer service. Having been in the industry for over eight years and communicating with business heads from various industries, I have understood the fundamental parameters that govern the performance of a help desk. I have summed them up here for you in no particular order.

Overall ticket count
Help desk is all about tickets. A simple report of your monthly ticket inflow will show you the total number of tickets you have received and how many your support staff have been able to handle. This ticket volume metric will help you understand the capability and efficiency of your support process and also give you insight on improving throughput.

Total Support Requests

Ticket Categorization
This metric shows what kind of tickets you have been receiving. If you see that a specific type of incident has been commonly reported multiple times, it is an area that requires your attention for a permanent fix. This will help in improving root  cause resolution and reducing incoming ticket count.
Channel-wise Distribution
A help desk may support multiple channels of incoming communication like email, voice and live-chat. A report on the channel-wise ticket inflow will show what mode of communication your customers prefer the most. Use this metric to gauge what channels require more concentration of staff and what channels require lesser investment.
First Response Time
First response time is the time taken between an issue arriving in the help desk system and being responded to by a support staff. First response time is a focal metric as it has a direct impact on customer satisfaction ratings. A customer expects his issue to be responded to immediately or at least notified of the submission so that he does not lose faith in the customer service. Strong customer relationships are a direct result of good First Response Time.
Mean Resolution Time
This is the time taken between a ticket arriving in your help desk system and being permanently resolved for the customer. Mean Resolution Time, also knows as Average Wait Time, decides whether your customer is going to be happy with your customer support. Resolution time may vary based on ticket type, but well defined SLAs are necessary to ensure that customers are receive predictable support services. Track MTR, improve performance and save cost and time for your support function.

Average Response Time

Ticket Resolution Count
With reference to our first metric, ticket inflow should be evenly matched with ticket resolution. If the ratio of ticket resolution to ticket inflow is very low, it shows that either you are understaffed or your staff are not sufficiently skilled to handle this volume of support requests.
Staff Performance
At the end of the day, you need to evaluate the performance of your staff individually. By viewing a report on individual staff performance, you will gauge which staff member is showing good response time and resolution time and which staff member needs improvement. This also shows if a staff member has been overloaded in a month and will help you build a stronger ticket assignment model for your support staff.
Customer Satisfaction
All said and done, customer service finally boils down to this tricky metric. You need to ensure your customers are being satisfied with your support. A simple report showing the feedback/survey for each ticket from all your customers will give you an idea of whether your customers/clients are happy with your support or if any area requires immediate improvement. This could also be staff-specific so that you can see if customers like the work of a specific support member and use it to track their performance

SLA Performance Metrics

So go ahead and start tracking the above metrics on your help desk to build the best customer support model for your organisation. HappyFox Help desk reporting offers some great options for support metrics. If you think we have left out some critical metric, feel free to drop your opinions/inputs in the comments and we will be happy to add them in our list.