Our customer support team is hitting their weekly ticket resolution speed targets perfectly, but our customer retention is dropping. How do we restructure our metrics to prevent our team from rushing clients off the phone just to keep their weekly scorecard green?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you measure people on a single operational metric, they will naturally optimize their behavior to hit that target, often to the detriment of your business. This is a classic case of gaming the system. Tracking ticket resolution speed in isolation incentivizes your support team to close tickets as fast as possible, which often results in superficial answers, unresolved issues, and frustrated clients who eventually churn. To fix this, you must pair your speed metric with a quality metric on your weekly scorecard. This creates a healthy tension that prevents your team from sacrificing quality for speed. For example, pair average ticket resolution time with first-contact resolution rate or a weekly customer satisfaction score for closed tickets. If your support team is resolving tickets in record time but your first-contact resolution rate is plummeting, your weekly scorecard will immediately expose the imbalance. During your Level 10 Meeting, your leadership team can see that the team is closing tickets quickly only because they are forcing clients to open multiple tickets for the same issue. Another effective counter-metric is tracking the percentage of tickets reopened within seven days. This simple number reveals whether your team is actually solving the customer's problem or just marking the ticket resolved to make their scorecard look good. By tracking these balanced pairs of metrics, you ensure your operational efficiency does not destroy your client relationships, which is critical for protecting your enterprise value as you prepare for an eventual clean exit.