Support Metrics & KPIs Glossary

Agent Occupancy

Agent occupancy is the percentage of a support agent's logged-in, available time that is actually spent handling customer interactions, including active conversation time and after-contact work. It measures how busy agents are while on the clock and ready to take work.

Average Response Time

Average Response Time (ART) is a support metric measuring the mean time customers wait for an agent reply across all messages in a period, not just the first one. It is calculated as total wait time divided by the number of replies sent.

Chat Abandonment Rate

Chat abandonment rate is the percentage of live-chat conversations that visitors start but leave before connecting with an agent or reaching a resolution. It is a support-quality metric that surfaces friction caused by long waits, confusing UX, or being ignored.

Chat Concurrency

Chat concurrency is the number of separate live-chat conversations a single support operator handles at the same time. It is both a real-time workload measure and a capacity-planning metric that trades agent efficiency against response quality.

Contact Rate

Contact rate is the share of a business activity that generates an inbound support contact, calculated by dividing total support contacts by a base unit such as orders, active users, or shipments. It measures how often using a product forces a customer to reach out for help.

Customer Retention

Customer retention is a company's ability to keep its existing customers over a defined period by driving repeat purchases, renewals, or continued use rather than losing them to competitors. It is most often quantified as a customer retention rate, the inverse of churn.

First Response Time (FRT)

First Response Time (FRT) is the elapsed time between a customer's first message in a conversation and the first human reply from a support agent. It measures how quickly your team acknowledges an inbound request, not how long it takes to resolve it.

Post-Chat Survey

A post-chat survey is a short question shown to a visitor immediately after a chat conversation ends, asking them to rate the help they received. It is the standard collection mechanism for customer satisfaction scores in live chat, and the fastest feedback loop a support team has.

Resolution Time

Resolution time is the elapsed time from when a customer first raises an issue until that issue is fully resolved and the conversation or ticket is closed. It is also called time to resolution (TTR) or mean time to resolution (MTTR) when averaged across many cases.

Response Rate

Response rate is the percentage of inbound customer conversations that receive at least one human reply, calculated as answered conversations divided by total conversations over a period. It measures coverage (did anyone respond at all), not speed.

Ticket Deflection

Ticket deflection is the share of potential support contacts that customers resolve on their own through self-service channels before a support ticket is ever created or a live agent is engaged. It is tracked as a support-metrics KPI that gauges how much demand a support team prevents rather than handles.

Ticket Volume

Ticket volume is the total number of support requests a team receives over a defined period, counting tickets, chats, or conversations across every channel. It is the core demand metric that drives staffing, capacity planning, and self-service investment.