Monitoring and analyzing First Response Time (FRT) helps you understand how to handle increases and decreases in ticket volume. The goal is to set expectations for your customers and your agents by maintaining a consistent FRT.
To do this, you need to understand how efficient your agents are, how holidays or busy periods impact ticket volume, and how to scale quickly when there’s an unexpected spike in ticket volume (for example, during a technical outage).
The positive customer relationship that results from a low FRT can be a major differentiator and often results in follow-on purchases and expansion revenue. Mapping your FRT to Net Promoter Score (NPS), or a similar survey, can help you understand how your customers react to wait times.
A slow FRT often inflates the initial incident and, even worse, can cause a frustrated customer to submit multiple tickets. In addition, customers who experience a slow FRT are more likely to tell their friends about it than if they had a quick FRT.
Even if you don’t yet have an answer, you should respond to the customer. A customer who has been acknowledged is a happier customer.