What is a KPI in service desk?

KPIs are essential metrics for evaluating service desk KPI reports. These indicators often focus on customer support and ticket resolution. Effective service desk reporting and KPI monitoring provide measurable results to help determine the success or failure of your customer support system. Tracking the right KPIs gives you valuable insights to enhance your service desk performance and ensure you meet your SLAs within your broader service management approach. With customer support, your service desk generates a wealth of data. The challenge is consolidating this information to understand what’s effective and what needs improvement. SolarWinds ® Service Desk reporting enables you to quickly pinpoint areas for ongoing enhancement by leveraging service desk metrics and KPIs to gain deeper insight into your customer support operations. These insights make it easier to identify trends in your customer support services, uncover areas of weakness, and recognize strengths to build upon. Applying this knowledge helps your organization operate more consistently, intelligently, and successfully.

What are the main KPIs for service desk reporting?

Service desks and help desk software play vital roles in making sure customers receive the right support to resolve their questions, issues, and requests quickly. Although there are many service desk metrics available for tracking your customer support services, focusing on a few essential metrics provides the core insights you need without creating information overload. Six key KPIs that provide valuable insight into your service desk include: Cost per ticket: This KPI measures how efficiently your customer support processes and agents operate and is determined by adding up your annual customer support expenses, including salaries and benefits for agents and managers, technology costs, telecommunication, and facility expenses, then dividing the total by your yearly ticket volume; because it factors in so many elements, this metric offers a clear view of your overall service desk performance. CSAT: To determine this KPI, send a feedback survey to your customers and, after collecting enough responses, calculate the percentage of customers who were satisfied with their customer service experience. Technician utilization (agent performance): This KPI shows how effectively your support technicians are working and is calculated by dividing the total workload the service and support team handles by each technician’s work capacity; monitoring this metric helps prevent burnout as a result of overworked technicians and indicates if low utilization is causing higher cost per ticket, signaling a need to optimize staffing. First touch resolution rate (first contact resolution): This KPI tracks the percentage of tickets resolved without escalation or reassignment; higher rates are linked to better CSAT, as customers generally prefer not to be transferred between technicians. First level resolution rate: In organizations with multi-tier support teams, this metric measures how often issues are resolved at the Tier 1 level. Mean time to resolve (MTTR): This KPI reflects the average time taken to resolve a ticket, from initial submission to closure by the service and support team; lower MTTR values indicate faster issue resolution.

How can I improve my service desk performance?

A practical way to boost service desk performance is by leveraging measurable service desk and help desk metrics to assess current outcomes and pinpoint areas for improvement. To truly enhance service desk performance, start with service reporting that focuses on tracking and analyzing the key metrics mentioned above. These metrics reveal the strengths and weaknesses in your customer service and support experience, allowing you to take targeted actions that drive service desk performance and help you optimize your processes. In particular, KPIs can help you strengthen: Accountability: With transparent data showing how each team member on your customer support team is performing, your technicians are responsible for their results and agent performance—this sense of accountability can make your organization more resilient and productive. Clarity: The in-depth insights from KPIs let you clearly identify who and what in your customer support system needs improvement so you can focus your optimization efforts, including updates to the knowledge base; by knowing where to prioritize support, training, and motivation, you can raise service desk performance and improve CSAT

What is SLA reporting?

SLA reporting is used to verify whether both parties and the associated assets are meeting the contractual standards for service delivery. The main objective for any service desk or help desk is to maintain the highest possible SLA compliance rate for all end users. Monitoring SLA compliance supports service desks in multiple ways. This KPI helps you assess whether your target service levels are achievable so you can set more accurate benchmarks. It also highlights which parts of your service desk are performing well and where improvements are needed. If your SLA compliance rates are not where they should be, thorough SLA reporting provides actionable metrics to help you raise these rates. SLA reporting can support better compliance by: Offering guidance to set realistic SLAs that reflect IT capabilities and business needs Enhancing communication about SLAs and the impact of violations. Establishing clear rules for escalation when necessary. Automating ticket routing and assignment through workflows. Creating training programs to boost technician performance.

Service Desk Reporting

Measure service desk performance with customized reports for KPIs, SLA breaches, CSAT scores, ITIL processes, and resolution times.

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Service Desk KPIs

Custom reports

Scheduled reports

360 Report

Power BI reporting

Measure service desk performance with KPIs

Track the service desk metrics that show where your team is meeting expectations and where work needs attention.

SolarWinds Service Desk reporting helps IT teams measure the performance of help desk and service desk operations. Track key performance indicators such as SLA breaches, response and resolution times, ticket backlog, incident throughput, and customer satisfaction scores. Use reporting data to spot bottlenecks, review service delivery, and give managers and service agents a clearer view of operational performance.

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Build custom reports around your priorities

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Use customized SolarWinds Service Desk reports to focus on the performance data your team needs to review. Start with out-of-the-box reports, then filter, adjust, and save new views for incidents, service requests, asset management, service catalog activity, knowledge base usage, and other operational data. Give service agents, managers, and stakeholders reporting that reflects the workflows and service outcomes they are responsible for.

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Share scheduled reports with stakeholders

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Provide regular performance updates without recreating the same report for every meeting. SolarWinds Service Desk lets teams schedule saved reports and choose recipients, timing, and output options. Share reporting on ticket volume, SLA performance, resolution trends, service-request activity, and key service desk metrics with managers, executives, service agents, and other stakeholders on a schedule that fits their needs.

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See operations in context with the 360 Report

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A single metric rarely explains the full service experience. The SolarWinds Service Desk 360 Report gives teams a broader view of incident and service-request management, helping connect performance data to day-to-day operational activity. Customize the date range to review the period that matters, identify trends, and examine the efficiency and effectiveness of your service operations from a more complete perspective.

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Extend Service Desk reporting with Power BI

Bring Service Desk reporting data into the reporting environment your organization already uses. The SolarWinds Service Desk Power BI Connector can incrementally import incident and asset-record data into Microsoft Power BI. Build dashboards, charts, and tables around the operational metrics that matter to your team or start with SolarWinds Power BI dashboard templates and tailor them to your reporting requirements.

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Service desk reporting FAQ

Find answers about Service Desk reports, KPIs, SLAs, dashboards, and exports.

What is service desk reporting?
Which service desk KPIs can I track?
Can I create custom reports in Service Desk?
Can Service Desk report on SLA breaches?
What is the Service Desk 360 Report?
Can I export Service Desk data to Power BI?
Can I schedule Service Desk reports?

Service desk reporting is the process of measuring and analyzing the data created through IT service management work. It helps teams understand the volume and type of work coming in, how quickly tickets are addressed, whether service level agreements are met, how customers rate their support experience, and where recurring issues may be affecting users or business operations.

SolarWinds Service Desk reporting gives teams access to reports and analytics designed to provide visibility into service desk operations. Teams can use reporting data to identify bottlenecks, evaluate trends, and focus improvement efforts on the processes or service areas that need attention. Learn about Service Desk Analytics: Reports.

Service desk reporting is the process of measuring and analyzing the data created through IT service management work. It helps teams understand the volume and type of work coming in, how quickly tickets are addressed, whether service level agreements are met, how customers rate their support experience, and where recurring issues may be affecting users or business operations.

SolarWinds Service Desk reporting gives teams access to reports and analytics designed to provide visibility into service desk operations. Teams can use reporting data to identify bottlenecks, evaluate trends, and focus improvement efforts on the processes or service areas that need attention. Learn about Service Desk Analytics: Reports.