Welcome to the world of KPIs used in the outsourcing industry. This article offers you an in-depth look at the ART KPI. Average Resolution Time or ART is one of the most used KPIs by businesses across the globe to monitor customer satisfaction. Continue reading to find out more.

• What is ART?
• Why is ART important?
• What are the benefits offered by ART?
• How is ART calculated?
• What is a good ART score?
• How to reduce your Time to Resolution
• Is ART an important metric?

What is ART or Average Resolution Time?

Businesses rely on different key performance indicators to keep track of customer satisfaction as well as how well the support team is performing. The Average Resolution Time or ART is one such KPI.

It measures the average time taken by end-user agents to resolve tickets or customer queries. This metric can be measured for the entire team or per agent. Hence, it makes it easy to monitor the performance of the team as well as individual performers.

Furthermore, the ART KPI comes in handy while measuring the performance of an outsourced support team. In fact, businesses rely on KPIs like these to ensure that support quality does not decline.

ART is also known as Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) as well as Time to Resolution.

It is important to note that the ART value depends on different factors. For example, the complexity of customer queries, the number of available agents, and so on.

Why is ART KPI important?

Many businesses make the mistake of reducing the number of available customer agents. They take this drastic step to reduce costs. But, this leads to longer resolution times that result in unhappy customers.

According to industry experts, KPIs are the best way to measure or monitor a team. Among them, ART plays a key role. Businesses respect customers’ time by maintaining low Average Resolution Time scores.

Businesses can meet their objectives by focusing on their clients, and KPIs like ART is one way to do so.

Customers who receive prompt responses to their inquiries, for example, are more satisfied than those who must wait hours or days for a response.

According to recent studies, customer satisfaction improves when issues are resolved quickly. In fact, ART KPI is a handy tool for measuring overall customer experience.

Observing ART scores helps businesses spot conversations that are taking too long. It also helps identify queries that need more time for a satisfactory answer from the agent.

Once these queries are identified multiple agents can be put to coming up with a solution or it can be assigned to agents skilled in that arena.

Additionally, ART scores help flag queries that need more time for resolution. Businesses can come up with different strategies to prevent this query from popping up.

Industry experts recommend monitoring ART scores across different time periods, product types, regions, and teams to come up with an optimal strategy.

In order to offer top-notch customer service, businesses need to be aware of how long their team takes to resolve cases. Then, they can come up with ways to resolve issues faster.

In fact, monitoring the average resolution time helps support teams be more effective and efficient. Businesses that value customer satisfaction cannot afford to overlook this metric.

What are the benefits offered by ART?

Tracking the ART scores helps understand the customer experience better. Here are a few of the many benefits offered by this KPI:

• The Art score helps track longer conversations.
• It helps predict which cases require additional agents or have to be escalated to the next level.
• ART KPI helps create specific knowledge bases for queries that take up more time.
• It improves the overall experience of the customer. Additionally, it boosts customer satisfaction.
• It helps increase customer trust and brand loyalty.

Conversely, a poor ART score can drive away customers. It can also lead to negative reviews that can hurt the company’s reputation. Hence, businesses need to work on their ART scores. Outsourcing to a reliable partner like Bobcares is one way to get this done.

One of the primary benefits offered by ART score is that it helps businesses track the performance of the support team. It shows the areas for improvement and helps firms in reaching their targets more quickly.

Experts suggest using the ART metric along with other core KPIs. This helps businesses and outsourcing firms boost customer satisfaction. This ultimately leads to an increase in sales figures.

How is ART KPI calculated?

The Average Resolution Time core can be easily calculated as seen below:

As seen here, we can arrive at the ART score by dividing the total duration of all resolved conversations by the total number of customer conversations during a specific time period.

This results in the average resolution time. It is also known as mean time.

However, some companies prefer to filter out pending and on-hold tickets to get a clearer picture of the average resolution time.

An increase in the ART score is a clear indication of an underlying problem. In this scenario, companies have to analyze the cause behind the high scores. The reason may be a lack of sufficient agents, a lack of training, and so on.

This is why most companies prefer to outsource their support services to trustworthy firms like Bobcares. Outsourcing firms have access to a large pool of skilled agents who are experienced in resolving issues quickly.

Different resolutions in the life cycle of a ticket

Let’s take a look at the different resolution times in the life cycle of a ticket:

• First Resolution Time measures the time between ticket creation and the first timestamp indicating the ticket is solved.
• Full Resolution Time considers the final or recent conversation as solved. In this scenario, the ticket can be reopened, thereby increasing resolution time.

According to industry experts, these two times have to be as close together as possible. Furthermore, a ticket’s ART score is also affected if it is marked as pending or on-hold.

Pending indicates that the agent is waiting to hear back from the customer before closing the ticket. Placing a ticket on hold means that the agent is waiting for a response from a third party or a senior agent.

Since pending and on-hold tickets have the power to increase ART scores, it is a good idea to filter them out during calculations.

What is a good ART score?

Baseline ART scores often recommend the industry and the mode of communication. For instance, 8 minutes is considered a good ART score for a support team in the services industry.

According to industry standards, 6 minutes is considered a good ART score for most sectors.

After calculating the ART, CSAT, and NPS scores, businesses will be able to get a clear picture of their customer service These KPIs help understand the customer service offered from the customers’ perspective. A good Average Resolution Time score depends on the following 2 factors:

• Customer Expectations

  While resolving an issue, the support team has to be aware of the time frame within which the customer expects a solution. This helps the team manage expectations. In addition, the time frame expectation differs according to the type of customer and the type of resolution.

  While some customers prefer a quick resolution, others may prefer a more permanent long-term solution. The latter will take up more time, thereby increasing resolution time.
• Complexity of query

  Another key factor in the Average Resolution Time score is the complexity of incoming queries. If the business offers technical support, the queries are going to be more complex than those received by an e-commerce business.

How to reduce your Average Resolution Time score?

Now that we know that a good ART score is crucial for customer satisfaction, let’s take a how to optimize this KPI:

• Embrace outsourcing

  Many businesses are unable to improve their poor ART scores due to a lack of resources, untrained staff, and so on. Fortunately, outsourcing is a great way to overcome this issue.

  Partnering up with a reliable outsourcing firm like Bobcares offers businesses a chance to redeem their KPI values. In other words, outsourcing helps businesses improve their customer satisfaction scores. This leads to improved brand loyalty and increased sales.
• Live Chat Support

  Recent studies have shown that conversations over live chat often lead to faster resolutions. Hence it helps increase the Average Resolution score without too much trouble.
• Schedule agents strategically

  In order to get good ART scores, firms have to schedule staff strategically. This includes analyzing support demands and figuring out the peak hours.

  Additionally, the business will need to increase the number of agents on schedule when they expand. Alternatively, outsourcing is a quick way out as well.
• Use reply templates

  Reply templates are a great way to optimize ART scores. This enables the support team to send out quick replies to repeated queries. In other words, it frees up the agents’ time to focus on complex queries.

Here are a few of the common reasons why support teams wind up with inflated ART scores:

• Resolved conversations are reopened by customers to add new issues.
• Conversations end, but queries are not resolved.
• Specific complex queries drag out the resolution time.
• Too much back-and-forth conversation without getting to the root of the matter.
• Customers do not respond quickly during follow-ups.
• Agents do not have sufficient information to offer quick responses.

Is ART an important KPI?

The instant a customer reaches out to the support service, the clock starts ticking. With time being an important constraint, most customers prefer quick resolutions. In fact, customer satisfaction increases with faster resolution of a complaint or query.

Customer service metrics form the core of every successful business. Core KPIs like ART enable businesses to improve their customer satisfaction. In fact, it is essential to measure the ART score regularly to ensure that customer service is not affected.

With the right strategy, businesses can use the ARTs core to improve their customer satisfaction. This leads to stronger customer relationships, thereby increasing customer retention.

However, besides the speed of a resolution, the quality of the resolution is also of utmost importance. For instance, if a business starts offering poor responses quickly, it will increase the ART score but it will bring down CSAT scores at the same time, hence the ART score is a delicate tightrope that needs to be tread with care.

Additionally, the ART score has the power to highlight the efficiency of the support team.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, the Average Resolution Time is an important metric. It helps firms figure out if their support team is taking too long to resolve customer queries.

Businesses need to consider the core KPIs like NPS, FRT, FCR, and ART to get an overall picture of customer satisfaction.

The ART score is a great way to tag queries that require a longer resolution time. This enables the support team to narrow down the reason behind the bottleneck and find a solution.

While different industries use different ways to measure the ART score, this KPI has to be monitored regularly.

The lower the Average Resolution Time, the lower the chances of customer frustration. Metrics analysis is a key part of any business strategy.

Once a business understands the importance of the ART KPI, it will be able to tweak its strategy and even come up with new ones in order to improve customer satisfaction.

ART, like other key KPIs, places the focus on customers. Businesses can achieve their targets by focusing on their customers, and KPIs are the way to accomplish this.

If a business is unable to handle the metrics or get a good score, bringing in an outsourced support team is the solution. Firms like Bobcares specialize in offering stellar support service, thereby improving customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in the long run.

To wrap things up, ART is an important metric. Businesses cannot risk ignoring this metric if they value customer satisfaction.