What is time to resolution (TTR)?
Time to resolution (TTR) is a customer service metric that measures the average time it takes for a support team to completely resolve a customer’s issue. Unlike first response time, which only tracks how quickly your team acknowledges an issue, TTR covers the entire duration of a support ticket, from initial contact through problem resolution.
A lower TTR indicates a more efficient support process and a better customer experience. Tracking TTR helps you gauge the efficiency of your customer service operations and their direct impact on customer satisfaction.
When support teams don’t have to switch between different tools because they have a unified view of the customer—including order history, past conversations, and marketing interactions—they can resolve issues faster without asking repetitive questions.
Why time to resolution (TTR) matters
Consumers expect quick, helpful answers from brands. According to Klaviyo’s 2025 future of consumer marketing report, 81% expect a response within 24 hours after reaching out about a negative experience.
Time to resolution, therefore, directly reflects your customer experience. A high TTR not only points to internal inefficiencies, like disconnected tools or data silos, that force agents to hunt for information instead of solving problems. It can also lead to frustration and churn.
A quick and seamless resolution, on the other hand, can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one, strengthening brand perception and encouraging repeat business.
Tracking TTR helps you identify bottlenecks in your support process and measure the real-world impact of your team’s performance. Focusing on reducing this metric improves operational efficiency and builds stronger customer loyalty.
How to calculate time to resolution (TTR)
Calculate your average time to resolution using a straightforward formula:
(total time it takes to resolve all support tickets in a given time period) / (number of conversations resolved in that same time period) = average TTR
When calculating your TTR, consider a few factors:
- Business hours vs. clock hours: Decide whether to measure TTR based on your team’s working hours or around the clock. Using business hours gives you a clearer picture of internal efficiency, while clock hours better reflect the customer’s total wait time.
- Average vs. median: Average TTR can be skewed by a few unusually long or short conversations. Because median finds the middle value in your data set, it lowers the influence of outliers and can sometimes provide a more accurate representation of your team’s typical performance.
How to reduce time to resolution (TTR)
Lowering your time to resolution is about giving your support agents the tools to work smarter, not just faster. Here are a few ways to reduce your resolution time:
- Unify customer context. Make sure your tech stack equips your agents with a complete, single view of cross-channel customer inquiries and customer data, so they don’t have to toggle between tools for context or ask the customer to repeat information.
- Automate routine tasks. Invest in a helpdesk that uses AI to handle repetitive work like ticket tagging, spam filtering, and routing tickets to the correct support rep, freeing up your team to focus on solving more complex customer problems.
- Enlist AI as a first line of support. AI customer agents can also answer common questions about products and store policies without even getting a human agent involved in the first place. If the problem is too complex for the AI agent to handle, it can pass the conversation on to a human being with full context so the customer never has to repeat themselves.
Benefits of a lower time to resolution (TTR)
Focusing on reducing your time to resolution delivers clear benefits for your customers and your business. Here are some of the positive outcomes of providing quick resolutions:
- Higher customer satisfaction: Faster resolution times can lead to happier customers who are more likely to keep buying from you in the future. According to our future of consumer marketing report, high-quality customer service is one of the top 3 reasons people stay loyal to a brand.
- Increased team efficiency: A lower TTR means your agents can handle more inquiries in less time, which boosts their productivity and allows you to scale your support operations without additional headcount.
- Opportunities for improvement: Tracking TTR helps you identify your most efficient agents and processes, empowering you to spot training opportunities, optimise resource allocation, and replicate best practices across your entire support team.
A lower TTR means happier customers and a more efficient team. Get started to learn how Klaviyo Helpdesk* gives your agents the full customer story, with AI-powered tools to resolve issues faster and turn great service into revenue.
*Klaviyo Helpdesk supports two-way conversations in any language, as long as both the customer and agent use the same language. Klaviyo does not translate messages between languages. The Helpdesk interface will appear in the language you’ve selected in your Klaviyo account settings.