FCR — First contact resolution
First contact resolution is the percentage of questions resolved in the first interaction, without the customer having to write again and without the conversation passing to another person. It is the metric that best summarises whether the team has what it needs to answer within reach.
What is first contact resolution?
First contact resolution is the percentage of questions resolved in the first interaction, without the customer having to write again and without the conversation passing to another person. It is the metric that best summarises whether the team has what it needs to answer within reach.
Also: FCR · first touch resolution
It is not the same as answering fast
You can have an excellent first response time and a terrible first contact resolution: just reply immediately asking for more details. The two metrics together say something neither says alone; the first without the second rewards exactly the wrong behaviour.
Why it matters
What changes in a SaaS
Every extra contact multiplies the cost of a case and the effort for the customer. Raising this metric is the most direct way to lower cost per ticket without touching volume, and it is nearly always achieved by giving access to the data rather than adding people.
First contact resolution in detail
How it is calculated
Conversations resolved with no reopen and no handoff, divided by the total. The definition of "resolved" has to stay the same across the whole period, or the series cannot be read.
Why it drops
Nearly always for the same reason: whoever is answering does not have the fact they need in front of them. If answering requires opening another tool, asking a colleague, or asking the customer for something already in the system, the first reply is not going to resolve.
How to raise it
By putting the account context on the same screen where the reply is written, allowing the most common actions to run without leaving the conversation, and documenting the cases that repeat. All three attack the same problem: the distance between the question and the data.
How Intake handles it
Questions about first contact resolution
What is a good first contact resolution rate?
It depends heavily on how complex the product is, so comparing it across companies says little. What is actionable is segmenting by question type: if billing questions resolve at first contact far less than the rest, there is a missing piece of data right there.
Does it count as first contact if an AI agent answers?
If the case is resolved and the customer does not come back, yes: the metric measures the experience, not who typed. If the agent answers and the customer rephrases, that is not resolution, it is one more contact.
Related terms
A term on its own is only half understood. These come up in the same conversation.
Resolution time
Resolution time is how long passes between a question arriving and it being resolved and closed. Unlike first response time, it measures the whole process, including waits on the customer and escalations to other teams.
FRT — First response time
First response time is how long passes between a customer sending their question and receiving the first reply from a person. It measures the initial wait, not the resolution, and it is the metric that weighs most heavily on whether support feels good or not.
Escalation
Escalation is handing a conversation to somebody with more knowledge or more permissions to resolve it. It can go from one support tier to another, from an automated agent to a person, or from support to engineering — and in every case whoever receives it has not seen the case until that moment.
Deflection rate
Deflection rate is the percentage of questions resolved without a person getting involved, either because the customer found the answer themselves or because an automated agent closed it. It is the metric used to justify any investment in self-service or in AI.
CES — Customer effort
CES measures how much effort it took the customer to get their problem solved. It is asked with a statement along the lines of "the company made it easy for me" and an agreement scale, and it starts from a specific idea: reducing friction retains people better than trying to delight them.
CSAT — Customer satisfaction
CSAT is the metric that measures how satisfied a customer was with one specific interaction. It is asked right after resolving — usually on a one-to-five scale or a thumbs up and down — and expressed as the percentage of positive answers over total answers.
