How long should IT support tickets take to resolve? This is a common question that we get from potential buyers of IT services. When this question is asked, we can be certain that they are talking about the reactive technical support portion of the Managed Services model, also known as the IT support help desk.
This is where the day to day technical support takes place. An IT help desk is made up of computer engineers who can support computer users remotely. This support can be communicated by phone or email, and usually always tracked in a support ticket, where each incident can be logged into a database. A ticketing system is mandatory for any reasonable metrics to be collected.
The help desk function
When someone from your company has a problem with their computer, network, printer, or other devices, who do they call? This "who" is a person (or people) who functions as your help desk. A synonym for the help desk function might be technical support or IT support, which may look different depending on who is managing your computer network.
For example, if a small business is managing all their IT support in-house, their help desk function may be a single person or two maximum. Since over 90% of all IT issues that a company experiences can be troubleshooted remotely at the help desk level, bench-marking may not be an apple to apple comparison. Nonetheless, you still can and should benchmark as much as possible. This will help you measure progress over time and how your current state may compare to what might be possible.
IT help desk metrics and bench-marking
Endsight, as a managed services provider, supports roughly 7000 users across 260 companies across all sorts of industries from professional service firms, to manufacturing, to food and beverage, to bio science, non-profits, etc. Because we support so many clients, you could look at the numbers below as a sort of a benchmark because these are the averages of the IT help desk of 260 different companies.
During strategy reviews, we provide our clients with technical support metrics on the account level, as well as broad metrics across all of our technical support, like the ones below. This helps them with bench-marking. We thought that we would provide these publicly to help you compare these to your own company.
Though this is not the ultimate benchmark for IT support resolution and response and customer satisfaction, but hopefully it will help you gauge where you are at with your current IT support provider.
How long should IT support tickets take to resolve?
Let's first look at the technical support metrics for Endsight's help desk (Response Center) relating to resolution time. All of Endsight's metrics are in bold and pertain to averages across a recent 365-day span. They could be represent of a typical year.
- Average time clocked per ticket: 57 minutes
- What percentage of tickets are completed with one time entry? 59.8%
- What percentage of tickets are closed on the same day? 48.8%
- How many tickets get re-opened on average? 3.1%
Not everything is about resolution time when it comes to the value that a help desk brings to clients. Other metrics that you can benchmark is response time and customer satisfaction.
Response time metrics
Again, Endsight's technical support metrics are in bold and are across a 365 day time frame.
- When calling the help desk, how long does it take on average to reach a computer technician who is ready to support you? 1.97 minutes*
- How long does it take for a computer engineer to respond to support tickets opened by email or support portal? 26.5 minutes
Customer satisfaction scores on tickets
Here are Endsight's customer satisfaction scores for support over the past year. Feedback is collected after ticket close.
- 97.9% positive
- 1.4% neutral
- 0.7% negative
- 47.6% of tickets have customer feedback (good measurement of customer engagement)
*Endsight's promise for reaching a support engineer is 5 minutes or less when calling the help desk.
We've partnered with eight other managed services providers who compare to Endsight in size and pricing models and we have found that the numbers below are slightly above average or reflect about what other MSPs are doing in terms of response times and resolution times.
Why are we providing these metrics to the public?
We believe that the technical support function of your business needs to be held accountable for their efficiency (measured in time) and effectiveness (measured in customer satisfaction and engagement). If your IT help desk is slow to respond, has poor ticket resolution time, or low customer satisfaction ratings, it is time to take a serious look at where the inefficiency is coming from.
Bottom line, your help desk function should be able to provide you these numbers whether you in-source or outsource your technical support.
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