Support Email response times

[raylward]

I am trying to uncover a good URL/website outlining current email response times.

We are an Inbound technical support call center, fielding anywhere from 4-6,000 email support requests per month. I have seen web stats for online retailers: within 6 hours, 24-48 hours, more than 3 days etc, but am wondering if anyone can supply the corresponding numbers for software tech support centers?

Or direct me to a useful URL specific to "software support" email and telephone response metrics?

Thank you

[gkern]

I have some numbers on technical support service levels for email. It is too long an answer to try to insert here. The short of it is that it varies by industry and customer base and your goals for email vs. phone support.

Give me a call and I will be happy to share my experience with you.

Greg Kern
CallTech
512-261-0409

[Thomas Williams]

It is quite difficult to determine standards for e-mail response times as this is very new to the industry, and being that there are various Technical support desks subject matter. Unlike phones, A caller will call and if he/she cant get through, they will hang up and call back or just keep calling until they get through.

Where I see most technical desks failing is delivering the response times it suggests. This will come at a cost and if the staffing levels are not in place to meet the service objectives or mean time to restore/resolve, more e-mails will follow or a call will be placed to the center for results creating contact redundancy and customer dissatisfaction.

In my experience in Telecommunications centers for network and software trouble shooting, we used a 6 hour e-mail/ticket MTTR (Mean time to restore/resolve) service levels with outbound phone calls placed to the customer every two hours until resolution. Where the problem came was in the areas of escalations to tier 2/3 which was out of our general helpdesk area with no control to resolve, thus increasing the amount of repeat e-mails which increased our e-mail/ticket count.

The best solution is determining the service level that meets your business needs and planning and budgeting the amount of staff based on historical e-mail arrivals. Once this is in place, it is critical to execute to this plan and ensure your bodies are in place because if not, you will be using a lot of overtime and playing catch up until your new e-mails arrivals decrease.

If you have more questions, please contact me at 770-974-1820

[ALFAGTV-6]

We provide technical support to clients in the Southern California area. Our, clients, all based here, require 24 hours or less response for emails. I have only one client that is 90% within 8 hours..... this is an expensive metric, careful if you sign up for it.

What I have seen is the industry moving from 24 to 12 hours.