Why Customer Support Ticket Backlog should be measured?

What is a Ticket Backlog:

It is the number of tickets that are still not resolved and kept On-Hold in the Helpdesk system. Every Support Department must track this metric because the higher the Backlog more the chance of customers getting upset. Let's take an example of a Service Desk system to assume that it has 4 levels of support.


Level, 1 they handle the basic request
Level 2, they handle the complex request
Level 3  they handle the technical request
Level 4  they handle Management request 

Now the Backlog for each level should be measured on a daily basis, so that the Support Manager/Head can measure % of Backlog for each Group and try to get it reduced by contacting each Group Leaders on a daily basis. Lower the Backlog means higher the chance of meeting the resolution timeline.

For level 1 support, the most common backlog KPI  is the average ticket backlog as a percent of the average daily ticket volume. Assume that this Support department handles an average of 1000 tickets a day and the average backlog every day is 100 tickets, the average end of day backlog is 10 % of ticket volume (100 open tickets at end of day ÷ 1000 average tickets per day = 10% of daily ticket volume). There are many Support Department with 0 Backlog in a day as they resolve all the tickets in the day itself or transfer the tickets to other departments.

Now for the other level of support example Level 2, Level 3 & Level 4 for this group the ticket backlog KPI is measured by segmenting the Age of the ticket as below.

a) ticket < 24 hours
b) ticket between 24 - 48 hours
c) ticket > 48 hours

Below is a Monthly Backlog snapshot of a Helpdesk.

Ticket Backlog gives a picture of how well each Level of the group is working effectively to resolve the ticket as fast as possible. At times the ticket Backlog will increase may be due to some business reasons. If you take the above example the backlog cases under less than 24 hours bucket are quite less which is a good indication however if you see there is a significant number of cases which are in the bucket of > 48-hour case backlog around 20%. So the Support Head/Manager in such cases should investigate and identify why that happened. Was there a discipline missing in resolving the case or Was there a process breakdown? If yes then which Group was accountable, this all should be investigated and a defined set of action plans should be created to prevent such backlog.

There might be various reasons why a ticket is in the backlog which we might find after investigating as below.

- We finished the case but forgot to close it
- We are actually waiting for the customer to confirm if the issue is resolved
- We actually missed that case
- We thought it was reassigned to another group
- We don't have a resolution to provide because we are waiting for help from another department 

As a Manager/Head of the Department, you can follow the below process to set expectations to reduce the backlog.

- We finished the case but forgot to close it: Put a KPI called % of Agent ticket backlog to include this in a Performance review.
- We are actually waiting for the customer to confirm if the issue is resolved: Automate the process so that such tickets are automatically closed.
- We actually missed that case: Ask the Support Agent to be more careful & include a coaching/warning process which can be documented
- We thought it was reassigned to another group: Ask the Agent to be more careful and confirm with the other Group once the case is assigned
- We don't have a resolution to provide because we are waiting for help from another department: Add an OLA i.e Operating level Agreement between groups so that each group can hold accountability and resolve the case on time.

Some Helpdesk software like Zendesk they give such bifurcation in their Report so that Managers can measure this on a daily basis. 

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