Track 2: Speed

Decrease your First Response Time (FRT) and Resolution Times (RT)

First Response Time plays a crucial role in determining the levels of customer satisfaction. This customer support metric tracks how long it takes for you to reply to the first message in a ticket.

Top-performing companies using Gorgias have an average first response time of .54 hours.

Resolution Time is the amount of time it takes from when a ticket is created to when it’s resolved. It's a critical metric for tracking team performance, highlighting potential improvements to internal workflows and processes.

Create teams in Gorgias

If you haven't already done so, create Teams in Gorgias to designate your agents by function (Level-1, Level-2, Sales, Social Media, Wholesale, Warehouse, etc.).

Determine which Views teammates or teams are responsible for

Determine which Views agents and teams are responsible for during their shifts. Indicate the priority if they're monitoring multiple ones (#1 Urgent, #2 VIPs, #3 My Tickets, #4 Unassigned, etc.).

Set up Auto-Assign Rules

Instead of waiting for your teammates to claim or assign tickets to themselves, enable Gorgias's Auto Assign feature to automatically route tickets to the agents and/or teams of your choice.

Create Macros

Macros are pre-made responses that help you respond to your customers faster. Is a customer asking you repetitive questions? Use a Macro. Based on your most common FAQs, Tags, and message Intents, create a set of Macros unique to your brand.

Here are examples of the most commonly used Macros formatted for both email and chat.

Need ideas? For a list of common Customer Support scripts used by other e-commerce brands.

The top Gorgias brands achieve first response times of ~10 minutes and resolution times of <60 minutes by focusing on Macro usage - a healthy team goal is 40-50%.

Create Auto-Reply Rules

To further automate your work, you can set up auto-reply Rules that will send out an automated response to your customers. Depending on the scenario, you can automatically let customers know when to expect a response, answer their most commonly asked questions, provide them with their tracking information, etc.

Messages sent by auto-reply Rules technically don't reduce your First Response Time under your Gorgias Statistics, as Gorgias measures the median time between the first message sent by a customer and the first response sent from an agent, but will still facilitate conversations between you and your customer.

Create a Team First Response goal

Refer to our Industry Standards to see how other similar brands in your industry compare. Your First Response Time (FRT) directly correlates with your resolution time and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.

Make sure your team understands the importance of this metric and bonus/incentivize them accordingly.

Get Gorgias Automate

Gorgias Automate helps 5,000+ brands provide instant resolutions for happier customers and a happier team. Upgrade your CX by resolving basic requests with AI automation and free your team to focus on complex interactions.

Watch this brand's video testimonial where they've automated 53% of their customer support tickets:

Staff your team according to your busiest hours

Staff your team according to your busiest hours. See Statistics -> Support Performance -> Overview to see the # of the tickets created by hour.

For example:

Sort your Views from oldest to newest

It's very easy to get distracted by new tickets coming into your helpdesk, so make sure to sort all of your Views from oldest to newest.

Failure to do so not only impacts your performance statistics but also leads to poor customer experiences for those eagerly awaiting your assistance.

Consider Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

During periods of high volume such as the holidays, consider implementing specialized roles/Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) where different agents/teams strictly handle shipping requests, returns, cancellations, product questions, etc.

Dozens of e-commerce teams have reported this being an effective customer support strategy.

Create an internal Resolution Time team goal

Create an internal Resolution Time (RT) team goal - refer to Industry Standards for ideas. Similar to First Response Times (FRT), bonus and incentivize your team accordingly. What gets measured, gets managed.

See our SLA Best Practices for Effective Support Tickets Management

Create a service level agreement (SLA) goal to manage customer expectations. With an SLA, you inform customers when they should hear back from you. This also helps your agents understand what's expected of them and how to prioritize their queues.

Once you have an SLA, consider creating Views to monitor any tickets falling outside your agreed-upon service level agreement (SLA).