First response time plays a vital role when it comes to determining customer satisfaction. When businesses focus on lowering the time to reply to customer queries, there is a higher chance of customer satisfaction. There are different industry benchmarks when it comes to first response time. Customers who contact you through email usually expect you to respond to them in 24 hours. For social platforms, the benchmark is 60 minutes or even less. In the case of live chat, customers expect a response in less than 1.5 minutes, while for phone, 3 minutes should be good enough though responding sooner will be better for your business.

Analyzing and monitoring your first response time allows you to understand how to take care of your ticket volumes. You must have goals put in place and set business expectations accordingly by having a consistent first response time. To achieve this, you must have a proper understanding of how efficient employees are, how off days or busy schedules can impact your ticket volume, and how to work quickly if there’s a spike in your ticket volume. For example, what to do in case of a technical outage.

Great customer relationships that result from having a low first response time can be one of the main differentiators for your business. Having a good first response time may often result in purchases and ultimately expansion in revenue. Mapping the first response time to a Net Promoter Score or a similar type of survey can give you a better understanding of how customers react to the wait times.

However, you can keep up with the first response TAT if your team has the proper training and tools to solve customer issues. Businesses need to monitor their first response trend to see how the team is performing. If you notice a few employees struggle to achieve the first response TAT, find out the reasons and suggest ways to improve.

Why should you measure the first response time?

First response time plays a critical role in customer experience, and it’s something that brands cannot overlook. Keeping track of your first response TAT will help you improve your customer satisfaction and increase conversions. Here’s why you should measure your first response time.

• Helps customer experience

Customers want their queries to be answered immediately, especially the ones who are facing major issues. In this day and age, nobody has the time and patience to wait for replies. When you respond fast to customer queries, you make your customers feel comfortable and create a friendly environment right from the start.

• Builds brand trust

A faster response time becomes critical when customers face an issue or try to make a purchase decision. If your response is delayed, this could cause your customers to get frustrated and turn away. A quicker reply will help build brand trust and make them feel interested because your brand is focused on helping and serving them.

• Enhances brand loyalty

Brand loyalty plays a significant role in brand building, and that’s why most businesses go in for the best ORM services. Interaction, listening, and monitoring tools allow brands to discover conversations and engage with their customers. It’s said that customers are more likely to stay loyal to your brand if you maintain a good relationship with them. Delay in replying to customer issues can have a direct impact on your relationship.

Also, faster response time ensures a lower attrition rate with your customer base and helps long-term relationships. Last interaction is a critical factor of how customers feel about your brand. It is also essential for brands to focus on staying active and participate in different industry discussions and groups. A brand may be perceived as not responsive or connected when inactive or slow to reply in live discussions. Hence, brands must focus on increasing their first response TAT to give their customers a better experience.

How can brands measure their first response time?

Once your team has created a ticket, measure the agent’s time to add that first response to the particular ticket. This needs to be captured at the ticket level. It’s important to remember that automatic responses do not count. The first response refers to the response made by the customer service representative.

So, average first response time = sum of the first response time of the total number of tickets/number of tickets.

Now, once you’ve measured it, you must monitor and assess the first response patterns. What are the causes of a delay in first responses? Which employees respond faster, and how do they do it? Answering these questions will help you move in the right direction and also improve your first response TAT.

With Konnect Insights, measuring First Response and relevant TAT reports is easy. With advanced workflows and time management rules, you can easily take note of your agents’ performances, response times, escalations and then dig into the causes to improve the process.