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Explore recipe: Calculating estimated cost of service

Andrew Forbes
  • Edited
Zendesk Product Marketing

What's my plan?

Suite Professional, Enterprise, and Enterprise PlusExplore Professional only

How much does it cost your support team to tackle questions about various issue types or how much time do you spend on various customers?

In this report, you'll use data collected by the ZendeskTime Tracking appto create a cost of service metric you can use in your reports.

Important:Values produced by this calculation are estimated and are intended only to give you an indication of support charges. This article is provided for instructional purposes only. Please post any issues you have in the comments section below.

This article contains the following topics:

What you'll need

技术水平:Medium

Time required:20 minutes

  • Zendesk Explore Professional or Enterprise
  • Editor or Admin permissions (seeGiving agents access to Explore)
  • Ticket data in Zendesk Support
  • The ZendeskTime Tracking appmust be installed, and must have collected data
    Note:The time tracking app stores data in custom numeric fields that are synchronized with Explore. If you have installed the Time Tracking app recently, the data required to build necessary calculated metrics might not yet be synced with Explore. This sync occurs once an hour.

Creating the cost of service metric

The time tracking app tracks how long agents spend working on various tickets. The app reports this in seconds, but for this recipe, you’ll convert the value into hours by creating a new calculated metric.

  1. In Explore, click the reports () icon.
  2. In the Reports library, clickNew report.
  3. On theSelect adatasetpage, click吃晚饭port>吃晚饭port - Ticketsdataset. This dataset is where the historic custom field data from the Time Tracking app is stored.
  4. In the report builder, open the calculations menu (), then clickStandard calculated metric.
  5. Name the new metricCost of service metric.
  6. In the formula window, enter the following formula:
    VALUE(Total time spent (sec))/3600*(your hourly rate)
    Tip:If you're working in a language other than English,read this articleto help you enter Explore formulas in your language.
  7. For example, if your hourly rate is $15.99, enter
    VALUE(Total time spent (sec))/3600*15.99
  8. When you are finished, clickSave.

Using the cost of service metric

现在您已经创建了度量,您可以使用它ny of your reports that use the吃晚饭port: Ticketsdataset.

To use the cost of service metric in a report

  1. In Explore, open a new report using the吃晚饭port: Ticketsdataset.
  2. In theMetricspanel, clickAdd.
  3. From the list of metrics, chooseCalculated metrics>Cost of service metric,然后单击Apply. Explore displays the total cost of service for all tracked time spent on tickets.

Now, you can add attributes to theColumnsorRowspanel to slice this cost data to your needs. For example, add theTicket IDattribute to see the cost for each ticket, or theAssignee nameattribute to see the cost for each assignee.

Next steps

You can change the display format of this metric to dollar amounts from the display format page of the chart configuration menu () . By slicing this metric by various attributes, you can produce detailed cost estimates for different parts of your organization.

For more help, seeCreating reports.

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    10 Comments

    • Sarah Pham

      Hi, if i dont have the time tracker app and still use this recipe what exactly will the report show?

      0
    • Taylor Bowser
      Zendesk Customer Care

      Hi Sarah,

      This recipe will only work if you're using the Time Tracking App as the formulas pull data from the custom fields that are populated by the app.

      The ZendeskTime Tracking appmust be installed, and must have collected data

      Note:The time tracking app stores data in custom numeric fields that are synchronized with Explore. If you have installed the Time Tracking app recently, the data required to build necessary calculated metrics might not yet be synced with Explore. This sync occurs once an hour.
      Best,
      -1
    • Sarah Pham

      Thanks Taylor, i have created the query as per above without knowing the time tracking app is required. It still gives me output, are you able to advise what data I am looking at?

      0
    • Taylor Bowser
      Zendesk Customer Care

      Hi@...,

      I'm going to open a ticket on your behalf so we can take a closer look at the report you've set up.

      Best,

      -1
    • Enrick Neil (NRCK)

      In the Metrics - should I use Average? AVG?

      0
    • Marco
      Zendesk Customer Care
      Hi Enrick, that's a good question. Based on the formula being straightforward, I would suggest using SUM which is what it would default to. Cheers!
      -1
    • Enrick Neil (NRCK)

      I don't think SUM is correct. Using this formula and using SUM in Metrics gives 3 digit number results per agent.

      This formula computes the cost per ticket right? based on their hourly cost.

      Do we use AVG?

      1
    • Marco
      Zendesk Customer Care
      Thanks for replying, Enrick. I think you're right. I was thinking that since the formula already had "/3600*(your hourly rate)" then using SUM would be enough, but it might result to adding the Total Time spent altogether. So yes, you will be using AVG. Thanks for the catch!
      -1
    • Joel Selwood

      I have several hourly rates to factor in, based on multiple regional hubs that carry differing agent populations, therefore differing weightings. Can this be accommodated somehow?

      0
    • Dave Dyson
      Hi Joel,

      I think you might be able to adapt this for your needs if you keep track of the applicable regional hub in a custom ticket field. If you do, then you should be able to use an IF THEN ELSE or a CASE statement in your standard metric formula (e.g., if the ticket custom field is Region X, then calculated the formula using that region's weighting, or if the ticket is attributed to Region Y, then use a different formula). For more information, seeUsing the IF THEN ELSE functionandAdding multiple conditional expressions with SWITCH.
      0

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