Most service desk dashboards measure activity. What they should measure is effectiveness. Those aren’t the same thing — and confusing them is how teams end up busy but not improving.
Here are the metrics that actually tell you something.
The KPIs That Matter
- FCR rate — Are we solving issues the first time? High FCR means your team is trained, empowered, and supported by usable documentation. Low FCR means something upstream is broken.
- Time to resolution — Are we efficient without sacrificing quality?
- CSAT — Did the customer feel it was handled well?
- SLA compliance — Are we prioritizing correctly?
Each metric answers a different question. Together, they tell a story about how your team operates — not just how fast they move.
What You Measure Is What You Get
What you measure becomes what your team prioritizes. Emphasize ticket volume, analysts move faster. Emphasize FCR, they diagnose better. Emphasize SLA alone, they may stop the clock instead of solve the problem.
Always ask: what behavior is this metric rewarding?
Rules I follow:
- Don’t track a metric you’re not willing to coach on.
- Define metrics clearly and repeatedly.
- Review them in combination, not isolation.
Using Metrics to Find Friction
Dashboards should help you spot friction, not just report results:
- Is low FCR tied to a specific category or analyst?
- Is time to resolution creeping up in one queue?
- Is CSAT dipping after a recent process change?
The value of a metric isn’t in the tracking. It’s in the decisions it drives.
Activity is easy to measure. Effectiveness takes intention.