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Glossary
— Efficiency —

Time to Close

— Definition —

Time to Close (also called Resolution Time) measures the total duration from when a customer opens a support conversation to when it is marked resolved. Unlike First Response Time, which only captures the wait for the first reply, Time to Close captures the full lifecycle of the issue. It reflects both responsiveness and efficiency.

— Formula —

Time to Close = Conversation closed timestamp − Conversation created timestamp

Reported as median across all closed conversations for a period. Conversations that are reopened and re-closed restart the clock in most tools — check your platform's definition before comparing across tools.

— Benchmark ranges —

B2B SaaS support, standard tier (excluding complex technical issues)

ExcellentUnder 4 hours
Good4–24 hours
Acceptable1–3 days
Needs improvementOver 3 days
— Calculator —

Calculate average time to close

Average time to close1.0 hr
— Common mistakes —
  • 1Conflating Time to Close with FRT — a fast first response followed by a slow resolution is poor service even if FRT looks good.
  • 2Not separating issue types — billing questions close in minutes; complex integration issues may take days. Mixing them obscures both.
  • 3Optimizing Time to Close at the expense of reopen rate — closing conversations prematurely to hit a metric creates reopen rate problems.
  • 4Using mean instead of median — outliers (complex multi-week issues) inflate the mean significantly.
— Related metrics —
FRTMedian First Reply TimeReopen Rate

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