A litmus test for your first response times

By definition, first response time is the time a customer receives the first response from the help desk engineer after raising a request. First response time is an important metric for the help desk because it contributes to customer satisfaction, and can also provide crucial insights into how quickly help desk engineers respond to new requests.

First response time targets vary based on request priority. The best way to track first response time is by setting a target for each of your priorities. Comparing your actual response time for each priority against its specified target will show you how far you're off the mark.

Here's a sample table we've created with target response times for each priority and the percentage of total requests that must be responded to within the specified target time.

Note: The target response time and percentage specified here is for illustrative purposes only, and you can set your own target response times and percentages based on your help desk requirements or agreed SLAs.

Based on the above table, we've created a pivot view (using ManageEngine Analytics Plus) to show the percentage of requests that achieved the response time target. As you can see, this view indicates that most of the requests don't meet the target response times. Analyzing reasons behind the slag can give you valuable insights into underlying issues with the help desk.

Steps to Recreate the report

Create the following formulas in the "Request" table. Please use the exact names so that the subsequent formulas can be used as is.

Time to respond in hours

if(isnull("Responded Time") = 0 , (unix_timestamp("Responded Time")-unix_timestamp("Created Time"))/ (60 * 60 ),NULL)

Target response time

If("Priority"='Critical', '95%', If("Priority"='High', '90%', if("Priority"='Normal', '85%', if("Priority"='Medium', '80%', if("Priority"='Low','75%', NULL)))))

Target

If("Priority"='Critical' and "Time to respond in hours"<0.5, 'achieved', If("Priority"='High' and "Time to respond in hours"<2, 'achieved', if("Priority"='Normal' and "Time to respond in hours"<4,'achieved',if("Priority"='Medium' and "Time to respond in hours"<8, 'achieved',if("Priority"='Low' and "Time to respond in hours"<24, 'achieved','not achieved')))))

Percentage achieved (This should be added as an "Aggregate formula")

100*(Countif("Request"."Target"='achieved'))/Count("Request"."Target")

To create the report using Analytics Plus, populate your rows and axes as shown below:

Rows:

Created time (Month and year)

Priority (Actual)

Target response time (Actual)

Data:

Percentage (Actual)

To create more interesting visualizations using your data, please check out our demo page.