Satisfaction per agent
Satisfaction per agent is CSAT broken down by the person who handled each conversation. It is used to see who needs support and what is working, and it is one of the metrics that does the most damage when used for anything else.
What is satisfaction per agent?
Satisfaction per agent is CSAT broken down by the person who handled each conversation. It is used to see who needs support and what is working, and it is one of the metrics that does the most damage when used for anything else.
Also: CSAT per agent · individual satisfaction
It does not measure the person, it measures their conversations
Whoever handles billing complaints will score worse than whoever resolves configuration questions, and that says nothing about how well they work. Comparing people without segmenting by question type turns the metric into an injustice with numbers attached.
Why it matters
What changes in a SaaS
Used well, it points at where training or documentation is missing: if three people score low on the same topic, the problem belongs to the topic. Used badly — for rankings or for bonuses — it pushes people to close the easy things fast and avoid the hard ones, which is exactly the opposite of what is needed.
Satisfaction per agent in detail
Segment before comparing
By question type and by channel. Within one segment, differences between people do say something; across segments, they do not.
The minimum volume
With twenty responses, a single negative rating moves the percentage several points. Below a certain sample the number is noise, and presenting it as if it were not produces absurd conversations.
What else to look at
The comments. An 80% CSAT with three comments saying the same thing contributes more than the percentage, and it is the only part you can act on.
Questions about satisfaction per agent
Should CSAT per agent be tied to pay?
No. The moment the metric decides somebody salary, it starts getting optimised: easy conversations get picked up, thorny ones get avoided, and the survey gets requested only when convenient.
How many responses does it take to mean something?
Enough that one stray rating does not move the result. Below thirty or forty a month it is worth reading the comments rather than the percentage.
Related terms
A term on its own is only half understood. These come up in the same conversation.
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.
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.
Support agent
A support agent is the person who handles incoming customer questions: reads them, finds the context needed to answer, resolves them or escalates them to whoever should take over. It is a reactive job by definition, and the work is measured in response time, resolution and satisfaction.
Support tiers
Support tiers are the usual way of splitting questions by what it takes to resolve them. Tier 1 handles the known and documented, tier 2 what requires technical knowledge of the product, and tier 3 what ends up with whoever wrote the code.
AHT — Average handle time
Average handle time is the time an agent actively spends on a question: reading it, finding the context, answering it and logging whatever needs logging. It excludes waits, which is why it is the metric that best approximates what a given support volume costs in hours.
SLA — Service level agreement
A service level agreement is the written commitment to respond within set deadlines. It fixes maximum times — usually first response and resolution — defines the hours in which they count, and normally states what happens when they are missed.
