Trend reports are great for identifying patterns in your data. Trend lines split data into meaningful timeframes that help you narrow down the problem to a specific time period, and by using additional filters, you can easily drill down to possible causes for the anomaly. 

Here are a few interesting trend reports  that cover the different stages in the life cycle of tickets. 

1. Trend of incoming tickets

Tracing a trend line for incoming tickets (as given in the below example) reveals specific time periods wherein the ticket inflow was unusually high. Given the time frame, it could possibly be an increase in employee head count, a major outage or a network failure, or a software upgrade that didn't really go as well as you'd hoped. 

2. Trend of average time to assign tickets

A trend line for the average time taken to assign tickets might exhibit unusual peaks as a result of increase in total tickets raised. But looking at the timeline, you can decipher if the reason is an increase in total ticket count or is it because of other factors like a delay in ticket assignment hinting that it's time for you consider automating ticket assignments etc.  

3. Trend of average first response time

Average first response times are a critical measure of your internal customer satisfaction index. If your average first response times peak above threshold values, it could due to a number of reasons such as tickets being assigned to technicians with different skill set or not experienced in that particular issue which calls for more training for your technical support staff. While poor communication with requesters could be another possible reason, it can be resolved by establishing an automated system to trigger auto responses.  

4. Trend of average time to resolve tickets

Needless to say, not all tickets can be resolved within the threshold time limit. But if you spot tickets that are way over their SLA-approved resolution times, it is a cause for concern. While you can always run a drill down analysis to look deeper into your data, this could probably mean the intensity of the issue was critical and required more time, or it could be because incoming ticket volumes was high for the month.

5. Incoming Vs Resolved ticket trend

Comparing the trend of incoming and resolved tickets is a good measure of the efficiency of your help desk. It is normal for resolved ticket trend line to fall below the incoming ticket trend, but if you notice a huge gap between the two - the difference could indicate a backlog in ticket resolution. 

Click here to check out more interesting reports and dashboards that can help you gain more insights into your help desk data. 

If you have any questions about these reports, or of you'd like for us to feature a particular report in this section, please leave us a message in the comment section below.