Effectiveness report

Measure how effectively your teams handle conversations with the Effectiveness report.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over a week ago

The Effectiveness report shows you how effectively your support team handles conversations over time. This report highlights:

  • Conversations replied to — Number of conversations that any teammate has replied to.

  • Closed conversations on first contact rate — Percentage of conversations resolved on first contact.

  • Teammate replies to close a conversation — Number of teammate replies to resolve a conversation.

  • Reassignments — Number of conversations reassigned after the first teammate reply.

  • Time to first assignment — The time from a conversation’s first message to when it is assigned to a teammate (before the first teammate reply).

  • Time from first assignment to close — The time from when a conversation is assigned (before the first teammate reply), to when it is last closed.

You’ll find the report under Reports > Human support > Effectiveness.

The first section makes it easy to see at a glance how well your team can handle different types of conversations, or if certain teams or teammates are spending more time on conversations.

The report can be filtered by:

  • Tag — Review a subset of conversations with certain tags.

  • Continent — Select a single continent, or more than one.

  • Country — Choose a single country, or more than one.

  • Channel — Filter based on where conversations started. E.g. email, chat, or your mobile app.

  • Started by — See only conversations started by your customers, or those in response to a bot/message.

  • Team assigned — Show conversations currently assigned to a team or teams.

  • Team participated — Show conversations participated in by a member of a team or teams (includes conversations not assigned to the team/s).

  • Teammate — Show conversations where the action was performed by one or more teammate/s (E.g. conversations replied to, or closed by that teammate).

  • Conversation data attributes — Show conversations with specific attributes that you define.

The ‘Channel’ filter will only contain those channels where you have installed Intercom.

Conversations closed on first contact

The first chart in this report shows a time based breakdown of your conversations that were closed on first contact:

If you’ve filtered for a single day, the conversations will be broken down by hour, or if you filter for a longer period they’ll be broken down into days (like in this example) or weeks.

How is ‘First contact’ defined?

To qualify as closed on first contact, a conversation must meet all of the following conditions:

  • Is currently closed.

  • Has only been closed once.

  • Was closed by a teammate (not a bot).

  • Contains at least one visible teammate reply.

  • Was only replied to by a single teammate.

If you see a low percentage of conversations closed on first contact, you should double check (or add) any assignment rules to ensure that conversations are being directed to the best team to handle them.

Teammate replies to close a conversation

The next chart shows the number of teammate replies to close a conversation, grouped by the date the first customer message was sent. If teammates send multiple replies before a customer responds, they’ll only count as one reply.

The default aggregation shown is median but you can choose a different aggregation, and your choice will be saved for the next time you view the reports. You can choose from average, maximum, median or minimum by using the ⚙️ Settings icon in the top right.

How are teammate replies counted?

Teammate replies counted in this report include all replies after the first message from a customer in conversations that are currently closed.

Replies are grouped together to ensure that multiple replies sent in succession (without a customer response, or message from another teammate) are only counted as one.

👆This example shows that the teammate sent 6 separate messages, but some of them are grouped for a total of 4 replies counted in this report.

If another teammate replies, or the conversation is closed this will also break the grouping.

Pro tip: Filtering this report to show different types of conversation (with conversation tags) can show you:

Conversations reassigned

This chart shows the number of conversations that have been assigned more than once after a teammate reply, grouped by the date the first customer message was sent at. It’s a good way to see if conversations are being picked up by the right person, or if any of the initial assignments could be automated rules.

When is a conversation reassigned?

If a conversation is assigned to a teammate (manually, by a teammate, by a bot, or by an assignment rule) and after they reply, it is then assigned to a different teammate or team, the conversation has been reassigned and will be counted in this report.

Any conversation which is resolved by the first assigned teammate will not be counted in this report.

Time to first assignment

The median amount of time for conversations to be assigned before a teammate reply, grouped by the date the first customer message was sent at.

The default aggregation shown is median, but certain Intercom plans let you choose a different aggregation, and your choice will be saved for the next time you view the reports. You can choose from average, maximum, median or minimum by using the ⚙️ Settings icon in the top right.

Conversations will not be counted toward this metric if a teammate replied before the conversation was first assigned.

Examples:

  1. Conversation is started by a customer at 10:55am.

  2. Assigned to a teammate at 11:05am.

  3. That teammate sends a reply.

Time to first assignment is 10mins.

  1. Conversation is started by a customer at 10:55am.

  2. Assigned to a teammate at 11:05am.

  3. Assigned to a second teammate at 11:10am.

  4. The second teammate sends the first reply.

Time to first assignment is 15mins.

Time to first assignment encapsulates data from any teammate that was assigned that conversation, regardless of any teammate filters that have been applied to the report as a whole - the data in this chart will not isolate for individual teammates.

If the time to first assignment is low, but your first response time is high, this could suggest that conversations are being assigned to teammates while they’re too busy to respond right away.

Time from first assignment to close

The next chart shows the median amount of time from the last conversation assignment (before the first teammate reply) to close, grouped by the date the conversation was created at.

This gives an accurate picture of how long your teammates spend handling conversations, excluding the customer's initial wait time.

The default aggregation shown is median, but certain Intercom plans let you choose a different aggregation, and your choice will be saved for the next time you view the reports. You can choose from average, maximum, median or minimum by using the ⚙️ Settings icon in the top right.

First assignment to close will include time for other teammates as well. This metric looks at the time of the first assignment to the time of it being closed (and any teammate messages in between).

First assignment time to close breakdown

The final chart shows a breakdown of the same metric, so you can easily see how many of your conversations fit into each grouping.


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