What a 15-minute response time actually means

“We respond within 15 minutes” is on the front of a lot of websites, including ours. It is worth being clear about what it means, because the phrase is doing different work for different companies.

Response is not resolution

A response time is the gap between you getting in touch and a person starting to deal with it. It is not the time until the problem is fixed. An automatic email saying your ticket has been logged is, at some providers, a response.

Ours is not. The clock stops when an engineer who can work on your problem has picked up the phone or replied in person. Last year that took 14 minutes on average by email and under three minutes by phone.

The number to ask for instead

Ask how many issues are fixed on the first contact. That is the figure that tells you whether the helpdesk is staffed by people who can actually do the work, or by people whose job is to pass it on. Ours is nine in ten. Anything under two thirds usually means a tiered queue, and a tiered queue means waiting.

What happens in the other one in ten

Something needs hands, or a part, or a supplier. You get told that on the first call, along with when the engineer will be at your desk. On the Complete plan that is the same working day; on Secure it is two hours. Then a short note afterwards saying what it was.

Why we put it in the contract

Because a number on a website is marketing and a number in a contract is a promise. If we miss it in a given month, the report says so and that month’s invoice reflects it.