What Is a Customer Service Report? 8 Key Metrics To Include

Your customer service team holds the power to turn casual shoppers into brand loyalists by providing fast, empathetic service that keeps customers coming back. To measure how effectively your team members are handling customer interactions, you can build a customer service report that shows how well they resolve issues and improve customer satisfaction.

In this guide, you’ll learn which metrics to include and why effective customer service reports are so important for improving support team performance.

What is a customer service report?

A customer service report presents key customer service data points that capture how quickly your team handles customer inquiries and how satisfied customers are with the support they receive.

It gives you structured visibility into how well your team is meeting customer expectations through key metrics such as average response time, first contact resolution rate, and customer satisfaction score. 

By regularly reviewing customer support reports, you can analyze agent performance, identify recurring issues, and make informed improvements to your customer service strategy that strengthen service quality and customer loyalty.

8 metrics to include in a customer service report

• Average initial response time
• First contact resolution rate
• Average response time
• Contact resolution time
• Ticket volume
• Interactions per ticket
• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
• Customer effort score (CES)

Tracking a variety of customer service metrics helps you gain a complete picture of customer service performance. 

Here are eight metrics to include in your customer service report, alongside industry benchmarks. Remember that while industry benchmarks provide helpful reference points, performance can vary widely based on company size, support channels, and customer expectations. Often, the most important comparison is your own past performance.

Average initial response time

Initial response time, or first response time, measures how quickly customer service agents send a first reply to customer inquiries, on average. This could be a response to an email, a live chat message, or a question submitted on social media. To know how your company is performing, on average, you need to divide all first response times by the total number of tickets addressed:

Initial response time formula:

Sum of all first response times / Total number of tickets replied to

Responding quickly when a customer first reaches out can reduce frustration, improve customer sentiment, and increase the likelihood that shoppers continue their purchase journey. 

Industry benchmarks for average initial response time vary by channel. For example, 80% of live chats are answered within 40 seconds—partly because many businesses use automation or AI-assisted chat—while the standard for email replies is within an hour.

First contact resolution rate

First contact resolution rate measures how often a customer’s question is fully resolved during their first contact with your support team, without requiring follow-up interactions. For example, if a shopper calls to ask if a shirt is available in their size and the service agent provides the answer without needing follow-up, that interaction is resolved on first contact.

First contact resolution rate formula:

(Tickets resolved on first contact / Total tickets) x 100

A high first contact resolution rate signals that your customer service team is reducing repeat inquiries, working efficiently, and meeting customer needs right away. A strong first contact resolution rate is between 70% and 79%, but benchmarks vary by industry and channel.

Average response time

Average response time measures how quickly your team replies to all messages across all open tickets during a given period, not just the initial response. It reflects the pace of communication throughout the entire support conversation. Monitoring this helps you identify workflow bottlenecks and resource gaps.

Average response time formula:

Sum of all response times during reporting period / Total number of agent replies during that period

If this number is high, it may indicate that ticket volume is overwhelming your team or that agents lack the information they need to respond efficiently.

Contact resolution time 

Contact resolution time, also called average resolution time, is an essential metric in a customer service report. It measures how long, on average, it takes for your support team to fully resolve an issue. It begins when a customer first reaches out and ends when your team closes the ticket.

Contact resolution time formula:

Total resolution time / Total tickets resolved

Shorter resolution times help reduce customer frustration and free up your team to handle new inquiries. Within 10 minutes is a common benchmark for phone and live chat interactions, while same-day resolution is the target for email or social media inquiries. Tracking this metric can also highlight process bottlenecks, such as repeated verification steps or open tickets waiting on manager approval to close. 

Ticket volume

Ticket volume measures the total number of support requests your customer service team receives within a given period. It reflects the overall workload facing your team and provides context for other metrics in your customer service report. 

A spike in ticket volume can lead to longer response and resolution times. Monitoring volume helps you anticipate staffing needs and identify patterns, such as recurring issues tied to a product launch or seasonal demand.

Interactions per ticket

Interactions per ticket measures the average number of agent replies required to resolve a single support ticket. It gives you a glimpse into operational efficiency, reflecting how many back-and-forth messages are needed to resolve an issue. 

Interactions per ticket formula:

Total agent interactions / Total tickets

If the interactions per ticket number are high, it may indicate that customers aren’t receiving clear answers upfront or that agents need more information to resolve issues efficiently—for example, when return policies are unclear, or agents must ask multiple follow-up questions to confirm order details. Lowering this number shortens resolution time and improves overall support performance.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

Customer satisfaction score measures how satisfied customers are with a specific support interaction. You typically determine this score via surveys that ask customers to rate how they feel about service interactions on a numerical scale.

Customer satisfaction score formula:

(Total CSAT score / Maximum possible score) x 100

CSAT reflects how customers perceive your support experience. Tracking it over time helps you identify trends in service quality and assess whether operational improvements are translating into better customer experiences. Average CSAT scores vary by industry; according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, online retailers have an average CSAT score of around 80%. 

Customer effort score (CES)

Customer effort score measures how easy it is for customers to resolve an issue with your business. You typically collect this through a post-interaction survey that asks a question such as, “How easy was it to resolve your issue with us?” 

Customers often respond on a 1 to 7 scale, where 1 means very difficult and 7 means very easy. Many businesses consider responses of 6 or 7 to be positive. Some surveys use the opposite scale, where higher scores indicate greater effort. Be sure to confirm how your survey tool defines positive responses.

CES rate formula:

(Positive CES responses / Total CES responses) x 100

Tracking CES helps you identify friction points—such as unclear return instructions or repeated verification steps—that make support interactions harder than they need to be. 

Tips for creating a customer service report

You can build a customer service report using data from your customer service management tool or customer relationship management (CRM) software. Keep these tips in mind when creating your own customer service reports:

• Choose a platform that makes reporting easy. Most customer service data lives in your help desk or CRM system. Look for a platform that centralizes conversations, integrates with your ecommerce store, and makes reports easy to build, customize, and share with key stakeholders. If you’re just starting out, a shared inbox or well-structured spreadsheet can work. As ticket volume grows, you can move to dedicated help desk tools like Gorgias or Help Scout.

• Select metrics based on your goals. If one of your business objectives is to improve response speed, prioritize metrics like initial response time and contact resolution time. If you’re focused on customer perception, emphasize CSAT and CES in your customer service reporting.

• Run reports on a schedule. Setting a regular cadence for customer service reports—weekly or monthly, depending on your company’s size—helps you identify trends, such as rising ticket volume after a product launch. Consistent reporting also makes it easier to compare current performance against past results and measure improvement over time.