Our customer support team is meeting its weekly target for average ticket resolution time, but our customer retention is dropping and we are hearing complaints that issues are being closed without actually being resolved. How is our support team gaming this metric, and what should we track instead?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your customer support team is gaming the system because they are being measured on speed rather than resolution quality. When employees are incentivized solely on how fast they close tickets, they will prioritize speed over satisfaction. They will close complex issues prematurely, tell clients to open a new ticket if the problem persists, or provide superficial answers just to stop the clock. This makes your scorecard look green while actively destroying your customer relationships.

To fix this, you must introduce a counter-balancing metric that measures the quality of the work. Pair your average ticket resolution time with your reopened ticket rate. A reopened ticket rate tracks the percentage of customer issues that are marked as resolved but are opened again by the customer within seven days.

If your resolution time is low but your reopened ticket rate is red, it proves your team is rushing through tickets without actually fixing the underlying problems. Additionally, you can track your first-contact resolution rate, which measures how many issues are completely solved during the customer's very first interaction with support.

By tracking both speed and quality on your weekly scorecard, you eliminate the incentive to game the system. Your team will understand that a ticket is only truly resolved when the customer is actually satisfied.