Zendesk WFM report and dashboard metrics

What each measure counts. Several are routinely misread, and the misreading changes decisions.

What each measure counts. Several are routinely misread, and the misreading changes decisions.

In the agent attendance report

In the agent activity report

The time off report adds approved, planned and unplanned time off, each as a duration and a count, plus Billable hours: the net paid hours lost to time off requests.

How the ticket points are counted

• Assigned. One point per ticket, however it arrived: they took it, somebody gave it to them, or an automation did. Never more than one for the same ticket.
• Attended. This counts submits, not actions. Leave a comment, change the status, add a tag and submit once, and that is one point. Comment and submit, then come back later to change the status and submit again, and that is two. Solving or escalating a ticket also earns an attended point alongside the other one.
• Solved. As you would expect, and it carries an attended point with it.
• Reopened. Awarded every time a ticket goes from solved back to open, and here is the part that surprises people: the point goes to whoever solved it, not to whoever reopened it. That is the intent, since it is a measure of solving too early, but it means the number sits with someone who may not have touched the ticket that day.
• Escalated. Only when they hand a ticket that was assigned to them to a different group. Assigning it to themselves in another group does not count, and neither does a ticket that already earned them an escalated or a solved point.

None of these is a productivity score. Read them as a description of how work moved, and check the definition above before anybody draws a conclusion from a difference between two people.

Three words that are not metrics here

These come up when people talk about staffing, and you will not find them in the reports. Knowing that saves an afternoon of looking.

• Utilisation. Not in the report templates. Zendesk does define a utilisation percentage once unified agent status synchronization is on, as logged paid time against paid time, but you will not find it as a metric to put in a report. What people usually mean by the word is Occupancy rate, which already measures support work as a share of paid time.
• Shrinkage. No metric. Build it from scheduled time against the paid and unpaid general task figures.
• Coverage. No metric. It comes from forecasting and scheduling rather than from a report.

Occupancy: high is a warning

It looks like efficiency and it means no recovery time between contacts. There is a published band for it: the metric follows the COPC standard, where 75 to 85 per cent is the benchmark, above 85 per cent means agents are busy with little idle time and heading for burnout, and below 70 per cent means significant idle time between contacts.

So this is a band to stay inside rather than a number to push up, and it is the measure most often celebrated when it should be a concern. The formula behind it is ticket time plus productive general task time, divided by that same total plus untracked and unproductive time.

Adherence is not performance

It measures following the plan. An agent who stayed on a difficult call through a scheduled break scores badly and did exactly the right thing.

Agree what handling time means

Does it include after-call work? Time the ticket sat waiting? Decide once, write it down, and use the same definition everywhere. Most disagreements about these numbers are disagreements about what they mean, which is why the definitions belong on the dashboard next to them.

See also

• Which Zendesk WFM numbers matter
• Workforce management glossary
• How do I see utilisation, occupancy and volume per hour