What Is Time-To-Resolution? How To Reduce It
- Published: December 14, 2022
It’s pretty common to run into a hiccup or two when interacting with a product. Whether it’s an issue with billing or a question about how to get the most out of a particular feature, a user reaching out for support isn’t an immediate red flag.
But when a user needs additional assistance, they expect it quickly and effortlessly. They don’t want to sit on hold waiting to speak with an agent or wait for their support team to figure out a solution.
A critical metric for measuring the success of customer support and help desk teams is time-to-resolution.
In this article, we’ll explore time-to-resolution, its importance, reasons why your team may have a high TTR, and strategies to reduce it.
You can also use our interactive time-to-resolution calculator to benchmark your help desk and support team’s average TTR.
What is Time-to-Resolution (TTR)?
Time-to-resolution measures the time it takes between when a customer submits a support ticket and when their issue is resolved. TTR can be calculated individually on a case-by-case basis or on average to see how your team performs.
The time-to-resolution clock starts when the customer reaches out, not when the support agent starts working on the case. If your customers must wait hours or even days before an agent can get to their ticket, that time is counted in your TTR.
Why is Time to Resolution Important?
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that customers don’t like waiting, especially when they’re already feeling frustrated with a platform problem or error.
Almost 60% of customers say long wait times and holds are the most frustrating part of dealing with customer service.
Measuring time-to-resolution helps you keep an eye on how long agents take to resolve customer issues so you can keep those wait times in check.
How to Calculate Time-to-Resolution
To find your average time-to-resolution, divide the total time spent resolving tickets by the number of resolved requests.
Average Time-to-Resolution = Total amount of time spent resolving tickets / Number of resolved requests
For example, if you completed 100 requests in one 8-hour (or 480-minute) work day, you would divide 480 by 100 and find that your average TTR is 4.8 minutes.
You can get more specific numbers using a tool that timestamps when requests are submitted and resolved.
Customer support software can also make it easier to identify trends, such as what particular demands are taking your team more time to resolve.
Use our time-to-resolution calculator to benchmark your support team’s average TTR here:
4 Benefits of Measuring Time to Resolution
Here are the four biggest benefits of measuring your time to resolution.
1. Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
Satisfied customers lead to loyal customers. While the best way to build customer satisfaction is by delivering a product or service that exceeds their needs and expectations, the support provided plays a major role in how happy (or unhappy) customers are. In fact, 96% of customers say they’re willing to leave a brand over bad customer service.
Measuring time to resolution can help you meet customer needs more efficiently, improve their customer experience, and create customer satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Identify inefficient processes
TTR can be long for many reasons. One issue is that your support agents can’t get tickets fast enough. Another problem may be that support agents aren’t well trained or they don’t have access to the resources they need to do their job efficiently. Other issues arise because the way you’re currently working just doesn’t work.
Measuring TTR and identifying where the most time is wasted can help you find inefficient or overly complex processes.
3. Establish a strategy to improve TTR
You can’t improve your time to resolution if you don’t know your starting point. Measuring TTR not only gives you a baseline to measure progress against but can help you start to develop a strategy for how to improve it.
Your TTR can give insights into your support team’s strengths, where they might need some improvement, and how they can get more efficient.
4. Track the success of your resolution strategy
Measuring TTR over time can help you identify if you’re moving in the right direction. Track changes to find trends, measure the success of new initiatives, or quickly switch up strategies that just aren’t working.
Consistent tracking and check-ins can prevent you from wasting too much time on strategies that won’t deliver the results you’re after.
7 Time to Resolution Challenges
Understanding the challenges that impact your time to resolution is crucial for improving your response rates. Here are seven of the biggest challenges standing in your way:
1. Back-and-forth conversations
Too much back-and-forth with customers or other support team members can add to the amount of time it takes for you to find a problem resolution. If your customer needs to repeat their problem to multiple people or your support team needs to wait for feedback from a supervisor or manager, it can make your time to resolution much longer than it needs to be.
2. Not enough information from the customer
Finding the right solution to a problem requires having a full understanding of what is going wrong. If customers aren’t providing enough information, it could prevent support staff from getting to the real root of the issue.
3. Initial first response time is too slow
Your support staff may be excellent at solving problems quickly, but they struggle to respond to new tickets with the same speed. Slow initial response times could be contributing to your high TTR.
4. Slow customer response time
It’s not always the customers waiting on a response. Sometimes, TTR is high because your customers are hard to get ahold of after submitting their initial response. Slow responses from customers might be hurting your overall resolution time.
5. Complex issues that require specialized support
Complex issues are bound to happen. But if your specialized support team isn’t available to solve those problems when they come up, it could contribute to a long TTR.
6. Slow internal processes
Slow or overly complex processes, such as too many approvals or checkpoints, could create bottlenecks that slow down your resolution time. Your internal processes may prevent your support team from being as efficient as possible.
7. High volume of cases to resolve
Too many support cases can make it difficult for your help agents to stay on top of new requests. Your high TTR may be a sign that your team is overwhelmed.
9 Ways to Reduce Time to Resolution
The right TTR strategy will make it easier to overcome these challenges. Here are 9 ways you can reduce time to resolution:
1. Proper internal training
Proper customer service training is the first step to ensuring they’re prepared for the questions and problems that come their way. Your support staff should be familiar with how your product works, common help desk tickets, and what processes to follow if they run into an issue where they don’t have a solution.
2. Build a help center
A help center is a go-to place for your customers and support agents to visit when they have questions or need guidance. Building your help center can provide visitors with extra resources, self-help guides, or other tools to resolve issues quickly.
3. Invest in a digital adoption platform
A digital adoption platform (DAP) like Whatfix provides in-app guidance, like walkthroughs or self-help menus, that can provide additional context and support to users. Investing in a DAP can improve your onboarding process or guide users through using new features, cutting TTR by reducing the number of support tickets.
Above: Example of contextual help and user support built with a Digital Adoption Platform.
Whatfix’s Self-Help overlays on to any web application, desktop application, mobile app, or website. It provides contextual help to users and integrates with your FAQs, support center, LMS, user documentation, and more. Users are presented with common issues and help content for their contextual area in the application, or they can use an open-ended search to find the specific help content they’re looking for. These help support cards often prompt in-app guidance, walking users through the specific workflow they need help on.
4. Monitor performance
To identify trends in TTR, you need to look closely at where your delays are. Particular teams, individuals, or request types could influence your average TTR. Monitor performance to find specific areas for improvement.
5. Hire the right people
Superior support starts with having the right team. If your staff isn’t equipped to handle certain types of requests, you’re setting them up for failure. Start by hiring the right people with the right skills or experience.
6. Automate repetitive actions
If your TTR is high because you’re manually completing repetitive tasks, such as assigning tickets, you can save time using automation. Look for quick and easy opportunities to add automation that will streamline your support processes.
7. Focus on the customer
A customer-first approach to problem resolution can help you solve issues faster. Focus on what that customer needs or wants and do your best to deliver a superior customer experience.
8. Optimize self-service support
Self-service support can reduce the number of tickets your support staff has to solve. Reducing your caseload can give your team more time to handle complex issues and let them get to those issues faster.
9. Pre-qualify with custom contact forms
Custom contact forms encourage customers to share all necessary information earlier, making it easier to get their requests into the right hands. This can reduce the amount of time spent discovering the root of the issue and ensure the support agent they’re paired with is prepared to help solve their problem.
4 Tools to Improve Your Time to Resolution
Improving your time to resolution is easier with the right tools. Here are our 4 recommendations for TTR.
1. Jira
Jira Service Management is a work management tool that makes it easy to collect, assign, and track support tickets. It connects Dev, IT Ops, and business teams so they can work together to solve customer issues faster and more efficiently.
Jira keeps a complete audit trail of changes, interactions, and requests so you can collect rich data about each and every request. In addition to shortening your time to respond, Jira can help you improve your overall support process to continue to deliver a superior customer experience.
Jira Service Management works best for teams that use Jira for other work management.
2. Whatfix
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides in-app step-by-step guidance. It can help improve user onboarding, giving them real-time assistance and support as they get familiar with your platform.
Whatfix can improve TTR by reducing your number of overall support tickets. Prompted self-service options can encourage users to find the answer they need on their own, leaving support agents free to respond to complex issues.
Whatfix is a great solution for teams swamped with questions on how to use platforms or how to get the most out of specific features.
3. HappyFox
HappyFox is a help desk and customer support tool that can make it easier for your team to manage tickets, a knowledge base, and community forums. Because everything is housed in one app, your team has fewer platforms to keep an eye on and all your conversations are organized.
HappyFox helps improve the agent experience, boosting their productivity and making it easier to do their job efficiently. Agents can get to tickets faster using automation, reporting, and analytics, improving customer loyalty and building long-term relationships.
HappyFox is a great option for teams that want a robust suite of tools in a clean, easy-to-use interface.
4. Help Scout
Help Scout connects all customer conversations in one platform. Manage live chat, shared inboxes, knowledge base materials, and in-app messaging all in one place — and make that experience even stronger with collaboration tools, integrations, and reporting.
Help Scout looks and feels like an inbox, giving it an intuitive feel without frustrating terms, tickets, or workflows. Support agents can use a tool that feels familiar to them and benefit from powerful features and automation without unnecessary complexity.
Help Scout is perfect for teams that use multiple ways to connect with their customers but want a simple platform to manage it all.
Time to Resolution
FAQs
What is time to resolution (TTR)?
Time to resolution measures the amount of time it takes between when a customer submits a support ticket and when their issue is resolved. TTR can be measured individually on a case-by-case basis or on average to see how your team is performing overall.
Why is time to resolution important?
Measuring time to resolution helps you keep an eye on how long agents take to resolve customer issues so you can keep those wait times in check.
How do I calculate TTR?
Divide the total amount of time spent resolving tickets by the number of resolved requests.
For example, if you completed 100 requests in one 8-hour (or 480-minute) work day, you would divide 480 by 100 and find that your average TTR is 4.8 minutes.
Start improving your resolution times by prioritizing customer experience — beginning with the onboarding and training process. Ensuring your users get the attention and support they need while getting used to your product will set them — and your team — up for success.
Implementing a tool like Whatfix can improve user adoption, boost customer retention, and reduce your support ticket load. If you’re ready to try for yourself, get started with a free trial of Whatfix today.
Above: Example of contextual help and user support built with a Digital Adoption Platform.
Whatfix’s Self-Help overlays on to any web application, desktop application, mobile app, or website. It provides contextual help to users and integrates with your FAQs, support center, LMS, user documentation, and more. Users are presented with common issues and help content for their contextual area in the application, or they can use an open-ended search to find the specific help content they’re looking for. These help support cards often prompt in-app guidance, walking users through the specific workflow they need help on.
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