Our customer support team is hitting their weekly ticket resolution speed targets out of the park, but our customer retention is dropping because clients complain their issues are not actually resolved on the first try. How do we stop our team from gaming their speed metrics on the Scorecard?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Whenever you measure an activity based metric on your Scorecard, you run the risk of your team gaming the system to hit their target. If you only measure the quantity or speed of support tickets closed, your team will naturally close tickets as fast as possible, even if it means giving incomplete or unhelpful answers.

To stop this behavior, you must always balance a quantity or speed metric with a quality metric. On your Scorecard, pair ticket resolution speed with a quality measure such as first contact resolution rate or customer satisfaction score.

Another highly effective metric is the ticket reopen rate. If a ticket is closed but the customer has to reply and reopen it within forty-eight hours, that is a clear indicator that the initial resolution was rushed or ineffective.

By putting both speed and quality metrics side by side on your weekly Scorecard, you force your team to manage the tension between efficiency and effectiveness. If speed is high but customer satisfaction is low, the metric is red, and the issue must be solved.

Make sure the owner of the Customer Support seat GWCs, which means they get, want, and have the capacity to do, the job of managing this balance. Bring both numbers to your Level 10 Meeting, and use IDS to address any imbalance before it harms your customer retention.