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Blog · Board and management reporting · Customer service

Ten questions a head of customer service asks, and the table that answers each

The ten questions a head of customer service puts to the team leads and the account managers, which accounts are surging against their own baseline, which have gone silent, which have to call twice, which accounts consume the most effort for their revenue, are we meeting each account's own SLA, what credits are owed, which how-to questions would an article have answered, which categories repeat across accounts, which tickets have no account, and what changed, each with the table from the ticket export, the contract register and the account list, and the answer to send back.

The short answerA head of customer service's questions are about accounts and questions rather than about agents, and each has a table from the ticket export, the contract register and the account list: surge against each account's own baseline; silence at formerly active accounts; repeat contact rate against the team's base; effort hours against revenue by tier; SLA attainment against each account's own contract; credits owed by clause; the deflection list ranked by hours; categories repeating across accounts; unassigned tickets; and the movements page. Every ticket has one account and one state, and the answer to send back is a team average that no account is at.

A head of customer service reports team averages and is asked by the CRO why the largest account is unhappy. The ticket export, cut per account and joined to the contract register, holds the answer. This guide is the ten questions, the tables, and the answer to send back.

The ten

# The question The table Identity Send back
1 Which accounts are surging? Ticket volume against own baseline; category split Tickets sum per account Team ticket volume
2 Which have gone silent? Formerly active accounts at zero; days Same as 1 Silence read as satisfaction
3 Which have to call twice? Repeat contact rate per account vs base; category Tickets in one state Team first-contact resolution
4 Who consumes the most effort for their revenue? Effort hours ÷ revenue vs tier norm; category; tenure Hours sum to logged Busiest accounts by count
5 Are we meeting each account's own SLA? Attainment against contracted targets by priority One target set per ticket Attainment vs the default
6 What credits are owed? Credits by clause, per account per month Same as 5 Credits claimed by customers
7 Which how-to questions would an article have answered? Deflection list: clusters, hours, article state How-to + fault + other = tickets Ticket counts by category
8 Which categories repeat across accounts? Category by accounts affected, repeat rate Same as 3 Category volume
9 Which tickets have no account? Unassigned tickets, routing source Every ticket to one account or listed Ignored
10 What changed? The movements page Every line cites Narrative

A worked exchange

Head of customer service: Who is surging? Response: Account 4471: 3 a week to 14, across four categories, nobody else surging. $840,000 account; account manager's call today. Ten other accounts surging on exports; the exports category is up threefold across the base; that one is engineering's. Table 1. Head of customer service: And the SLA there? Response: 4471 signed one-hour P1 response; attainment 71 percent against that, 97 against our default. $2,700 of credits owed this month under their clause. Tables 5 and 6. Head of customer service: Effort? Response: Five times the tier norm, integrations 62 percent, three years' tenure. A product fault, not onboarding. Table 4.

Three tables, one account, two owners: the account manager and engineering.

Where it goes wrong

Team averages. The account at 55 percent repeat inside the 81.

SLA against the default. The tightest contract breached invisibly.

Per agent only. Coaching, and no retention view.

Deflection unmeasured. The same question two hundred times a month.

Every week, ten tables

Covirage produces the ten tables from the ticket export, the contract register, the help centre data and the account list, with the identities checked. The customer service page describes the setup, and the surge list guide covers the first table.

Questions people ask

Which question first?

Surge, because an account whose tickets went from three a week to fourteen is either a product fault affecting others this week or a relationship in trouble, and both need a call today. The category split says which, and the account manager or engineering gets the list.

Why per account rather than per agent?

Because per agent is coaching and per account is retention, and the head of customer service is asked about retention by the CRO. The agent view is a second table; the account view is where the revenue is.

What is the identity?

Tickets equal first-contact resolved plus repeat plus open; effort hours per account sum to logged handling time; every ticket is measured against one contracted target set or the default, labelled. A first-contact-resolution figure of 81 percent with no account beneath it is sent back.