Blog · Board and management reporting · Customer service
How a customer service leader measures the support effort each account consumes, from ticket handling time and the account list: hours per account per quarter, effort per dollar of revenue against the norm for accounts of the same tier and product, the accounts far above it and the categories driving them, the accounts far below it that may be disengaged, and the two conversations, product and commercial, that the split points to.
A support team knows its busiest accounts by name and its revenue by account from a different report. Joined, they show the accounts consuming ten times the support of accounts that pay the same, and the categories that make them expensive. This guide sets out effort per account against the norm, the two lists, and the two conversations.
Per account, per quarter:
Effort hours = Σ handling time on the account's tickets Effort per revenue = effort hours ÷ quarterly revenue Norm = median effort per revenue among accounts of the same tier and product Effort ratio = effort per revenue ÷ norm
Per account, per category: effort hours, to find where it concentrates.
Account identifiers only.
Σ accounts' effort hours = total handling time in the period
A ticket with no account fails it and its time is listed as unattributed.
| Account | Revenue/qtr | Effort hours | Per $1,000 | Norm | Ratio | Top category | Tenure | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4471 | $210,000 | 310 | 1.5 | 0.3 | 5× | Integrations: 62% | 3 yrs | Product: recurring fault |
| 2210 | $60,000 | 140 | 2.3 | 0.4 | 6× | How-to: 71% | 2 months | Onboarding; expected |
| 9034 | $180,000 | 9 | 0.05 | 0.3 | 0.2× | 4 yrs | Disengaged? Tickets down 80% | |
| 1187 | $95,000 | 180 | 1.9 | 0.3 | 6× | Configuration: 58% | 2 yrs | Commercial: premium use on standard tier |
Four accounts, four different findings from one ratio. Account 4471 is a product fault that engineering should see with the account list. Account 2210 is fine for two months. Account 9034 has gone quiet, which is its own list. Account 1187 is consuming premium support on a standard contract, and the account manager has the hours.
| Pattern | With | About |
|---|---|---|
| High effort, one product category, persistent | Engineering | The fault, with the accounts affected |
| High effort, configuration or how-to, persistent, not onboarding | Account manager | Tier, training, or pricing at renewal |
Effort measured without revenue. The busiest accounts are just the largest.
Norm across tiers. Enterprise accounts look expensive because they are large.
Onboarding not excluded. Every new account is on the list.
Low-effort accounts ignored. The disengaged one is the churn.
Mapped once, the ticket export and the account list produce effort per account, the norm, the ratio, the category split and both lists every quarter. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The customer service page describes the setup, and the first contact resolution guide covers the repeat-contact measure that usually explains a high-effort account.
The ticket export's time fields: time logged by agents, or first-response to resolution elapsed time where logged time is unreliable, stated as which. Where neither exists, ticket count weighted by category median handling time is the fallback, labelled.
It is an account with a reason. A large account onboarding a new product will be high-effort for a quarter by design. One that has been high-effort for four quarters on the same category has a product problem or was sold something that does not fit. The category and trend say which, and the report shows both.
An account paying for a standard support tier and consuming a premium tier's hours, on categories that are not product faults, is under-priced for what it uses. The report gives the account manager the hours and the categories, and the renewal is the moment.