Time to resolution is a critical customer service metric for MSPs that’s inextricably linked with customer satisfaction. Finding ways to reduce your MSP's average resolution time will invariably boost customer loyalty and increase the chances of clients recommending your services.
Keeping your resolution time down is largely a matter of training your help desk technicians and giving them the right tools to manage their communication and workflows. Look for ways to streamline your service workflow to cut the average time required for resolution and improve the customer experience.
The onboarding phase is a critical step for your MSP in setting up a successful relationship with each client. A comprehensive onboarding process (see our MSP onboarding checklist for tips) allows you to equip users with the knowledge and skills they need to navigate your systems seamlessly without needing to contact your service team for help at every turn.
Doing the groundwork at this stage will put your clients in good stead to self-serve by equipping them with easy access to the information and tools they need to troubleshoot common problems. This results in fewer inquiries for your service team, giving them more time to handle important issues that come in.
Ultimately, the more work you put into your onboarding process, the fewer problems you'll face down the line. Offer extensive guidance including interactive walkthroughs and tooltips to provide contextual and practical documentation on how to get the most out of your services.
Taking a proactive approach to customer service means you reach out to your clients before they realize they need help. This cuts resolution time as you can anticipate potential issues before they become a problem that needs to be solved. It's also a huge plus for your relationship with your client as they'll feel seen and valued.
You can make technical assistance more proactive by analyzing your clients' feature usage. This helps you understand user behavior and foresee problems before they occur. Tag certain features that could be stumbling blocks and track users' interaction with them. Take it as a cue to offer help when you detect a pattern of low usage or user abandonment.
Making communication as easy as possible is key to resolving problems efficiently. Integrating Thread is the best way for MSPs to offer their clients a streamlined and efficient line of communication with MSP technicians. Thread connects businesses with their MSP via the chat software the business already uses.
Our cutting-edge solution reduces communication breakdowns by offering the most direct way to get clients the help they need. This includes:
Time to resolution is one of the key MSP KPIs to track and measure performance. Reducing time to resolution by optimizing communication channels will improve customer satisfaction and boost the likelihood that clients will stay loyal over time.
Create a comprehensive knowledge base that can be navigated quickly, using a platform like IT Glue or Hudu. This empowers your clients to solve problems on their own in just a few clicks. Your knowledge base should build on the skills you developed with your clients during the onboarding process. Start by providing solutions to the most common queries and repetitive tasks your clients undertake.
Doing this unlocks the ability to surface the right information, in the right channel, at the right time via solutions like Magic Agents. This enables your clients to troubleshoot technical issues even outside of business hours and frees up your technical team to focus on more complex or pressing issues.
Tip: Train a GPT to document in your voice automatically. This is just one way that you can use AI tools for IT support.
Passive surveys are useful for collecting instant feedback from users without disrupting their flow. Their objective is to capture problems as soon as customers face them, giving the MSP critical insights into each feature’s functionality. It also helps you identify problems that could be solved before they impact customers.
Passive surveys are a great way of reducing help tickets for your support team. This frees up technicians to face other issues as they come through.
Clients can find moving between touchpoints within their IT system frustrating if their progression isn't seamless.
Understanding user behavior is essential to creating experiences that meet your clients’ needs. Tracking how clients interact with your systems is a key part of this as each customer interaction gives you insights into how your MSP can improve the customer journey and lower service requests.
A useful analysis should give you the answers to the following questions:
You can track customer interactions by tagging certain features or creating custom events. Data collected from a specific period can then be analyzed to identify trends that your customer support agents need to know.
Remember that the fewer service requests your technicians receive, the faster they can resolve the most pressing and complex queries. Proactively looking for potential problems and solving them before they grow is therefore key to lowering your time to resolution.
Use this formula to calculate your support team’s average resolution time. This is the same formula that measures average resolution time in a customer service team.
Formula:
Average Resolution Time = Total Resolution Time / Number of Resolved Requests
A 2024 paper by Dr. Marcin Majka suggests that the significance of resolution time lies in the impact it has on customer experience and offers insight into the efficiency of a business’s customer service operation. Swift problem resolution doesn’t only solve problems in the moment; it also builds customer trust and loyalty and enhances businesses’ reputations through positive word-of-mouth and online customer reviews.
Customers expect their problems to be solved within a few hours to optimize productivity. Review your processes and adopt solutions to slash your resolution times.
Reason Your Response Time Is Slow |
Possible Solutions |
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Your first response time is slow. |
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Conversations go back and forth between the client and MSP. |
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Technicians lack information from the customer to respond quickly. |
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The client makes multiple service requests. |
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Requests are being lost internally. |
Process client queries through chat so that the whole team can stay on top of the status of service requests. |
Reducing resolution time is a vital way to meet or exceed customer expectations and fulfill your Service Level Agreement. Providing resources to help clients troubleshoot their own problems, using chat-based communication channels, and implementing an automated triage system are effective ways to cut down resolution times.
Despite rapid technological progression over the past decades, many MSPs' approach to service requests hasn't kept pace. Replace antiquated ticketing systems with a streamlined and highly efficient solution that reduces your time to resolution and ensures service magic for your clients every time.