Connect to IntercomMean Time to Resolution
Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) is the average time from when a support ticket is opened to when it is fully resolved and closed. Borrowed from ITSM, MTTR has become a standard customer support metric as a complement to First Response Time. While FRT measures speed-to-first-reply, MTTR captures the total lifecycle of the issue — including all back-and-forth, escalation time, and waiting periods. It is particularly important for complex technical escalations and enterprise support tiers.
MTTR = Sum of all ticket resolution times ÷ Number of resolved tickets
Resolution time = closed timestamp − created timestamp. Prefer reporting median MTTR over mean to reduce outlier bias from complex multi-week issues. Unlike FRT, MTTR includes off-hours time unless your helpdesk is configured to track business-hours-only.
B2B SaaS, standard tier (business hours)
Calculate your mean time to resolution
- 1Conflating MTTR with FRT — a 5-minute FRT and a 3-day MTTR describe completely different failure modes. Both matter.
- 2Not segmenting by ticket priority — MTTR targets for P1 (critical) should be 10× stricter than P3 (low priority).
- 3Using calendar time when customers expect business hours — a ticket opened Friday at 5 PM closed Monday at 9 AM is 16 business minutes old, not 64 calendar hours.
- 4Treating long MTTR as an agent problem — most outliers are caused by product bugs, third-party dependencies, or waiting for customer input.