The support metrics cheat sheet nobody gives you on day one
CSAT, FCR, AHT, FRT, CES, resolution time — what each metric actually means, the range that counts as healthy, and the specific trap every one of them hides.
Nobody hands you the metrics glossary on your first day. You get a headset, a login, and a dashboard already crowded with acronyms someone two levels up decided mattered. By week two a team lead is asking whether your AHT is "trending the right way," and you're nodding along, quietly unsure what a good number even is. Here is the cheat sheet you should have been given.
The pattern is the same for every metric on that dashboard: each one measures something real, has a band that counts as healthy, and hides a specific trap that bites the moment you chase the number instead of the thing behind it.
CSAT — did we make them happy?
Customer Satisfaction is the survey that fires after a ticket closes: "How would you rate the support you received?" It's the most-quoted figure in the building because it's the easiest to explain. Industry-average CSAT for phone support lands here:
with 75–84% counting as good and 85%+ as world-class. For context, the whole US economy has hovered near 76.9 out of 100 for years — national satisfaction is a plateau, not a climb, so holding steady year over year is not failing.
The trap: CSAT only hears from people who bother to answer, and the people who bother tend to be the delighted or the furious. A rising CSAT can mean better service — or that your quiet, mildly-annoyed majority simply stopped responding. Read it next to response volume, never on its own.
FCR — did we fix it the first time?
First Contact Resolution is the share of issues solved in a single interaction: no callback, no reopen, no "let me escalate that." Of all the operational numbers, it tracks satisfaction the most reliably, which is why it earns a spot on the wall. The cross-industry average: