A quick read with a big impact.

5 Key Performance Indicators for a Successful Help Desk Support Team

Help desk KPIs are the most important measurable outcomes that indicate the success and failure of your help desk support operations. Without them, you can never be quite sure what’s working. And selecting the right help desk KPIs allows the help desk support team to focus their efforts purely on what’s most important.

But how do you measure the performance of your help desk support team? How do you set goals and assess performance when the job is defined as "customer service"? There are several useful metrics that can be applied to help desk evaluation, but here are five top key performance indicators you should incorporate into your planning.

1. Contacts Received
Since the purpose of a help desk support team is to solve problems and provide customer service, it's essential to know the volume of incoming requests. This information gives you a guide to overall workload of the team and guides you in managing staffing levels. Contact tracking should also be segmented into meaningful time frames, such as per hour, per week or per season, as well as channels (phone, chat, email, social media). Data can be used to find patterns that help you anticipate ebbs and flows of incoming requests.

2. Response and Wait Times
Time is money for both you and your customers. We all know how frustrating it is to sit at the other end of a phone call or online chat, wondering if anything is being accomplished. Response time is the period elapsed between initial request and first contact, while wait time is the "down" periods while the agent works on the request. The longer these times are, the greater your customers' dissatisfaction.

3. Rate of Resolution
How efficiently does your help desk support team handle requests? Are they resolved within first contact, or do tickets remain open for unspecified amounts of time? According to a report by Harvard Business Review, the number one factor in establishing customer loyalty is reducing their effort. A high first contact resolution (FCR) rate goes a long way toward creating happy customers.

4. Cost Per Ticket
In today's hyper-competitive environment, companies have to make the most cost-effective use of their resources, and help desk support is no exception. Cost per ticket is found by dividing service desk operating expenses by total ticket volume during a given time period. There are two ways to improve cost per ticket: spend less or handle more tickets. Of course, either can improve your metric, but you could end up paying a high price for stretching your team too thin. It’s important to remember the original goal, to support the business, as you evaluate the cost per ticket metric of your help desk.

5. Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the reason for maintaining a help desk support team, making this is the ultimate KPI. All other KPIs impact this goal, but the most direct means of measurement is through customer surveys. Be sure to calculate the ratio of completed surveys to the number sent out for accurate perspective.

Your help desk support team should always be striving for improvement. Hopefully, these 5 KPIs help give you a sound foundation to keep them on track for success.

If you're looking for help in determining the best KPIs to measure the performance of your help desk support team, we invite you to speak with our team of help desk experts today!

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