Our technical support team maintains a perfect response-time metric on our Scorecard, but clients complain that tickets sit unresolved because techs send automated or empty replies just to stop the clock. How do we restructure this Scorecard number to stop staff from gaming response SLAs?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Whenever you measure a single speed metric without a balancing quality or outcome metric, people will naturally game the system to protect their performance status. Tracking initial response time in isolation encourages technicians to send canned acknowledgments like We have received your request, which stops the internal SLA timer while doing nothing to solve the client problem.

To stop this behavior, eliminate standalone initial response time from your Scorecard. Replace it with a paired measurable or an outcome-based velocity metric.

Implement these two numbers on your weekly departmental scorecard:
- Time to first substantive resolution plan, which measures the duration until a technician provides actual troubleshooting steps or an estimated time of completion.
- First-contact resolution rate, which tracks the percentage of tickets solved permanently without secondary escalation or back-and-forth messages.

When you pair delivery speed with resolution quality, gaming becomes impossible. If a technician sends an empty reply to protect their response speed, their first-contact resolution percentage drops, turning their secondary metric red.

In your Level 10 Meeting, review customer satisfaction scores alongside resolution velocity. If client complaints emerge while resolution metrics show green, bring the discrepancy to the table and use IDS to examine ticket transcripts. Make it clear to the department manager that hitting a synthetic activity target at the expense of client satisfaction is unacceptable. A proper EOS Scorecard measures real business health, not bureaucratic compliance.