Glossary
First-call resolution
First-call resolution is the share of customer contacts settled without a callback, a transfer or a second ticket: one conversation, problem gone. It is the support number that lines up best with whether customers stay, and the easiest one to fake by closing tickets the customer then reopens under a new number. Measure the customer's problem, not the ticket.
01
Counting resolutions the way a customer would count them
A good weekly row for any team handling inbound problems, sitting beside contacts handled so the percentage cannot hide a quiet week. Owned by whoever runs support. Reopened tickets deserve a row of their own rather than a footnote, because that is the number that catches a team closing work to hit a target.
Every support metric can be met by being unhelpful faster, and this one is no exception. A ticket closed with an answer that did not work looks identical to a real resolution until the customer writes again, usually under a new number. Pair it with reopened tickets and with a repeat contact rate counted per customer rather than per ticket.
Worked example: A payments company reported eighty-four percent first-call resolution while repeat contacts ran at one and a half tickets per customer per week. Agents were closing conversations after sending an article link. Counting per customer over seven days instead of per ticket dropped the figure to sixty-one percent, which matched what the complaints had been saying.
Sources: klipfolio.com/kpis/support; zendesk.com/blog/customer-experience/retention/first-contact-resolution-friend-foe-frenemy
Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score asks how likely a customer is to recommend you on a scale of zero to ten, then subtracts the detractors from the promoters.
02Cycle time
Cycle time is how long one unit of work takes from start to finish: order received to order shipped, ticket opened to ticket closed.
03Ratio metric
A ratio metric divides one number by another: win rate, cost per lead, revenue per employee, the percentage of orders shipped on time.
04KPI examples by department: sales, ops, finance, HR
Concrete KPI examples for each department in a small company, tagged leading or lagging and weekly or monthly, to help you build a Scorecard that works.
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