First response time
The time between a customer’s first message and the first reply from your business. It is the number customers feel most, especially on WhatsApp and live chat, where they expect minutes, not hours.
- Use the median, not the average. A few conversations that waited overnight make the average look much worse than most customers’ experience.
- Decide whether you count business hours or every hour, and say which when you report it.
- An automatic “we got your message” doesn’t count as a response. A reply that starts helping does.
Resolution time
The time from the first message until the problem is solved. For simple questions that is the same conversation. For problems that need other teams, such as a refund or a failed transfer, it is the life of the ticket, and it is usually the number regulators and managers care about.
Measure it per kind of request. A card block and a disputed transfer should never share a target. Banks have the added duty of meeting the times the CBN sets for each kind of complaint; inbox and tickets shows how promised times work in Texa Desk.
First contact resolution and reopen rate
First contact resolution is the share of problems solved in the first conversation, with no follow-up needed. Reopen rate is the share of conversations marked solved that the customer comes back about.
Read them together. A team, or an AI, that closes conversations too early will show a fine resolution time and a rising reopen rate.
Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
At the end of a conversation, ask the customer to rate the help, usually from 1 to 5. CSAT is the share of ratings that are 4 or 5:
CSAT = ratings of 4 or 5 ÷ all ratings × 100. If 180 of 240 customers who answered gave 4 or 5, your CSAT is 75%.
Two cautions. Only some customers answer, and the very happy and the very unhappy answer most. And always read the comments: a low score is more useful with its reason. Texa Desk can send the survey automatically when a conversation is solved, on WhatsApp too.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS asks how likely a customer is to recommend you, from 0 to 10. People who answer 9 or 10 are promoters, 0 to 6 are detractors, and NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, so it runs from −100 to 100.
NPS is about the whole relationship, not one conversation, so ask it every few months rather than after every chat. When you want to know why customers feel the way they do, a short interview tells you more than a score. See research.
Handover rate and automatic resolution
If AI answers some of your conversations, track the handover rate (the share passed to a person) and the automatic resolution rate (the share solved with no person involved and not reopened).
Be wary of “deflection”: a conversation the AI ended is not the same as a problem it solved. Compare reopen rate and CSAT for AI-answered and team-answered conversations. Our guide to using AI safely covers this.
Setting targets that fit
- Start from your own numbers for the last month, not from someone else’s benchmark.
- Set targets per channel: customers on WhatsApp and live chat expect much faster replies than by email.
- Set targets per kind of request, and tell customers the promised time when it is longer than they would expect.
- Report a small set every week, and read conversations alongside the numbers.
Texa Desk reports these across every channel and team. See analytics.
