The first week of a new support desk: what to measure, what to ignore

A new support desk produces a rush of numbers in week one, and almost all of them are too small to mean anything. First response time on eleven conversations is noise, not a baseline.

What is worth watching in week one

  • Are conversations reaching the inbox at all? Coverage first: a channel that silently drops messages is worse than no channel.
  • Does every conversation have an owner? Unassigned threads are the first thing a shared inbox loses.
  • Which three questions repeat? Those become saved replies, not metrics.

What to ignore

  • CSAT with a handful of responses.
  • Average resolution time before the team has agreed what "resolved" means.
  • Any dashboard nobody has opened twice.

Week one is for proving the pipe works. Numbers become useful once there are enough conversations for them to be a rate rather than an anecdote.

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