We noticed our customer support team is gaming their weekly average response time metric by sending automated placeholders or closing tickets prematurely. How do we structure our Scorecard to expose and prevent team members from manipulating metrics to look good on paper?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you measure people on a single metric, they will naturally optimize for that number, even if it hurts the business. This is why you must never track speed metrics in a vacuum. If your customer support team is gaming their average response time by closing tickets before they are actually resolved, your Scorecard lacks the necessary counter balance metric. To solve this, pair every efficiency metric with a quality or outcome metric. If you track average response time, you must also track first contact resolution rate or customer satisfaction scores on the same Scorecard. If response times look incredible but the resolution rate drops, the data immediately exposes the manipulation. In your Level 10 Meeting, watch for these imbalances. When a number is green but downstream indicators are red, you have found a metric that is being gamed. Address this during the IDS portion of your meeting. Be clear with the team that hitting a speed metric at the expense of quality is a failure. Additionally, review the measurables assigned to each seat on your Accountability Chart. Ensure that the person responsible for support quality has the authority to audit tickets. Running on clean data means creating a system where gaming the numbers is mathematically impossible because the balancing metrics will always tell the truth.