The average number of times an agent interacts with a customer ticket before resolution.
Agent Touches per Ticket, also called Replies per Resolution, is the average (mean) of the number of times your customer support agents interact with customer tickets before they are resolved. It’s a crucial metric in gauging the efficiency of your customer support staff.
Agent Touches per Ticket is an important KPI for your support team to monitor.
Agent Touches per Ticket is an important KPI because it indicates the amount of interaction between your support agents and customers.
While it’s naturally a good thing for your support team to be friendly and even conversational with your customers, a too-frequent back-and-forth about your tickets indicates that customers’ problems and complaints are being inadequately addressed.
If this occurs, it also means your Escalation Rate will probably rise in tandem, as it’s likely that your tickets are being passed on to agents on other teams.
Keeping the Agent Touches per Tickets to a minimum ensures your customers are having their concerns resolved quickly and efficiently.
Agent Touches per Ticket is best decreased by training your support team adequately. Giving them the appropriate know-how and resources to address customer concerns will go a long way in reducing ticket handling.
Another practical means to reduce Agent Touches per Ticket is to incorporate automation wherever feasible. Having a self-service chatbot on your website to handle basic customer queries will significantly reduce them in your queue, freeing up agent time and space to handle more urgent or complex requests.
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that customer service quality should never be sacrificed to meet a KPI goal. Rather, doing the work on the front end to improve your service will allow you to meet this KPI, keeping your customers happy and improving your own business in the process.
Other KPIs similar to Agent Touches per Ticket include: