See your backlog, response and resolution at a glance.
Operational help desk reporting for a small UK team, without dashboards to build. Solves ships open backlog, ageing buckets, waiting count, first response time, resolution time and created vs resolved, all filtered by brand, so you can read your week in a couple of minutes and act before a customer chases.
Reporting at a glance
Your week, read in a couple of minutes
Open backlog, first response and resolution, and a simple weekly trend of created versus resolved, all on one screen. Named reports that are ready to read, with no dashboards to build.
- Open backlog, first response and resolution, side by side
- A simple weekly trend of created versus resolved
- Filter any report by brand to read each identity
The short answer
What are the metrics for help desk reporting?
The metrics that matter for help desk reporting are volume, backlog, ageing, waiting count, first response time and resolution time. Together they answer six plain questions: how much is arriving, how much is piling up, how long it has sat, how much is parked on the customer, how fast we reply, and how fast we close. Solves ships all six as named reports, filtered by brand, so a small team gets the picture without building anything.
Most helpdesks hand you a dashboard builder and a blank canvas. That is fine for an analyst with time to spare, but it is the wrong starting point for a team of two or three answering email between other jobs. Solves takes the opposite view: the reports a support team checks every week are already built, named in plain English, and sitting one click from the queue.
The reports draw on the same data and the same first-response and resolution timers as the queue views. So a number you read in a report matches what you see when you open the queue. The figures are not a separate analytics product that drifts out of step with the work; they are the work, counted.
The reports
What each report shows, and why it matters
Six operational reports, each answering one question a small support team actually asks. Every report can be filtered by brand, so a multi-brand workspace stays readable.
Open backlog
Backlog is the count of tickets that are still open and waiting to be worked. It is the single most honest measure of whether your team is keeping up. A backlog that creeps up day after day is the early warning that you are taking on more than you are clearing, long before a customer complains. Filter it by brand to see which identity is running hot.
Ageing buckets
Ageing splits open tickets by how long they have sat: the fresh ones, the ones a day or two old, and the stragglers that have slipped for a week. A backlog of ten can be healthy or alarming depending on whether those tickets are an hour old or a fortnight old. Ageing buckets show the difference, so you can pull the oldest work forward before it turns into a chase or a bad review.
Waiting count
Waiting count is the number of tickets parked on the customer, in the Waiting for Customer state. These are not your delay, but they still need watching, because a customer who never replies leaves a ticket open forever. The waiting report lets you see how much is genuinely on the customer and sweep up the ones that have gone quiet, rather than letting them flatter your open count.
First response time
First response time measures how quickly a human reply goes out after a customer first writes in. It is the metric customers feel most directly: a fast first reply, even a holding one, reassures someone that they have been heard. Solves tracks it from the moment a customer writes in to your first public reply, so you can see at a glance how long people are waiting to hear back.
Resolution time
Resolution time is how long a ticket takes from arrival to being resolved or closed. Where first response shows whether you are responsive, resolution shows whether you are actually finishing the job. Watching both together stops the trap of replying fast and then letting tickets linger half-solved, so you can see which tickets are taking too long to put right.
Created vs resolved
Created vs resolved compares what arrived against what you cleared over the same period. If you resolve as many as you create, you are holding steady. If creations outrun resolutions for a fortnight, your backlog is quietly growing and you can see it coming. It is the simplest trend a small team can act on: are we keeping pace, getting ahead, or falling behind?
How reporting works
Built for a team, not an analyst
Reports that are ready to read, scoped correctly, and tied to the same timers as your SLAs.
Named reports, ready
No dashboard builder to learn. The reports a support team checks every week are already built and named in plain English, one click from the queue.
Brand filters everywhere
Filter any report by brand so a multi-brand workspace stays readable, and see at a glance which identity is running hot or falling behind.
Same timers as the queue
First-response and resolution figures use the same timers as the live queue and the breaching view, so the numbers match what your team sees.
Respects ticket visibility
A restricted teammate sees figures built only from tickets they are allowed to view. Reports are never a side door to hidden ticket data.
Aligned with SLAs
Ageing and waiting reports lean on the same timers as the Breaching SLA queue view, so reporting and live work tell the same story.
Filter and focus
Narrow by brand, mailbox, assignee, state, priority, tag and date range, so a report answers the exact question you brought to it.
Access and trust
Reports respect who is allowed to see what
A report is only as trustworthy as the access rules behind it. In Solves, reporting respects the same ticket-visibility scope as the queue, so a restricted teammate never sees hidden ticket data through a report.
Access in Solves is set two ways: brand access decides which brands a teammate can work, and ticket visibility decides whether they see every ticket in those brands or only the ones assigned to them. Both rules carry straight into reporting. A teammate limited to one brand sees backlog, ageing and response figures for that brand alone. A teammate limited to their own tickets sees totals built only from their work.
This matters because reports are easy to leave on a shared screen or send round in a stand-up. If reporting ignored visibility, it would quietly leak counts and trends from brands or agents a viewer is not cleared for. By building every report from the viewer's own permitted set, Solves keeps a report safe to share without exposing another brand's volumes or another person's caseload.
It is also consistent with the rest of the product. Customer support content is encrypted at rest with per-organisation keys, access is authorised only, and logs are metadata-only, so no message body or email address is written to a log line. Reporting fits that posture: it counts the work without ever surfacing the content of a ticket you are not allowed to read.
CSAT and custom reports are coming, not in the pilot
The six operational reports above are shipped today. Customer satisfaction scoring (CSAT), custom report builders, scheduled report emails and CSV export are on the roadmap, not in the pilot. We will not show you a satisfaction figure or an export button that does not exist yet. When they ship, they will be announced in the changelog.
Reading them together
Why these six reports are stronger read together
No single report tells the whole story. The value of a small, fixed set is that each number sets the others in context, so a couple of minutes of reading turns into a clear decision about where to put your attention this week.
Take backlog on its own. A figure of forty open tickets means very little until ageing tells you whether they arrived this morning or have been drifting for a fortnight, and waiting count tells you how many are genuinely parked on the customer rather than sitting on you. The same forty can describe a calm Monday or a queue that is quietly failing people, and only the combination tells you which.
Pace works the same way. Created vs resolved shows the direction of travel, but it does not say whether speed has slipped. Pair it with first response and resolution times and the picture sharpens: a team that is clearing as much as it takes in, yet watching its first response time creep up, is heading for trouble even while the backlog looks steady. Reading the two side by side catches the drift before customers feel it.
Brand filters add the final layer. In a multi-brand workspace a healthy overall queue can hide one identity that is running hot, because a calm brand masks a struggling one in the totals. Filtering each report by brand turns a single workspace-wide number into a per-brand read, so you can move a teammate or a saved reply to the brand that needs it rather than guessing from an average. Because every report is built from the viewer's permitted tickets, that per-brand view stays inside the access rules, and a stand-up screen never leaks one brand's figures to a teammate who works another.
This is the deliberate trade in Solves. A broad analytics suite can answer almost any question you can phrase, given the time to build the query. A small, fixed set answers the handful of questions a busy support team actually asks every week, in the order they tend to ask them, with no setup. For a team of two or three answering email between other work, the second is the one that gets read.
In practice
How a small team uses these reports each week
Read the backlog first
Open backlog and ageing tell you in seconds whether the queue is healthy or quietly growing, and which brand is carrying the weight. Pull the oldest work forward before it ages further.
Check pace and parked work
Created vs resolved shows whether you are keeping up; waiting count shows what is genuinely on the customer. Sweep up the parked tickets that have gone quiet.
Watch response and resolution
First response and resolution times tell you whether you are replying quickly and actually finishing the job, on the same timers your SLAs use.
Honest comparison
Reporting in Solves vs a typical helpdesk
Where ready-made operational reports help a small team, and where Solves deliberately stops short.
| Solves | Typical helpdesk | |
|---|---|---|
| Core operational reports | Six, named and ready out of the box | Often a dashboard you build yourself |
| Respects ticket visibility | Built from the viewer's permitted tickets | Varies; can over-expose by role |
| First-response and resolution timers | Built in, with a breaching view | Often a paid or configured add-on |
| CSAT and satisfaction scores | Coming, not in the pilot | Usually available, often paid |
| CSV export and custom builders | On the roadmap, not shipped | Commonly included on higher tiers |
Competitor facts last verified 13 June 2026. Re-check the vendor's current plans before deciding.
Solves does not claim parity with a full analytics suite. If you need custom dashboards, scheduled exports or satisfaction surveys today, a broader platform is the better fit; Solves focuses on the operational reports a small email team reads every week.
FAQ
Reporting questions
What are the metrics for help desk reporting?
The core help desk metrics are volume (tickets created and resolved over a period), backlog (open tickets waiting to be worked), ageing (how long open tickets have sat unanswered), waiting count (tickets parked on the customer), first response time (how quickly the first human reply goes out) and resolution time (how long a ticket takes to close). Solves ships all of these as operational reports, with brand filters, so a small UK team can see the queue clearly without building dashboards.
What are the 5 key CX metrics?
The five customer-experience metrics teams quote most often are first response time, resolution time, ticket volume, backlog or open count, and a satisfaction score such as CSAT, NPS or CES. Solves ships the four operational ones today: first response, resolution, volume (created vs resolved) and backlog with ageing. A satisfaction score depends on CSAT surveys, which are coming and not part of the pilot, so we do not claim them yet.
What are the 4 metrics of customer service?
A common four-metric set for customer service is response time, resolution time, ticket volume and backlog. Each answers a different question: are we replying quickly, are we closing things, how much is arriving, and how much is piling up. All four are shipped in Solves as named reports you can filter by brand, so you can read your week in a couple of minutes rather than exporting spreadsheets.
Do reports include tickets a teammate is not allowed to see?
No. Reporting respects the same ticket-visibility scope as the queue. A teammate restricted to certain brands, or to tickets assigned to them, sees figures built only from the tickets they are permitted to view. Reports never become a side door to hidden ticket data, so you can share a report screen without leaking another brand or another agent's work.
Can I export reports to CSV or a spreadsheet?
Not in the pilot. The reports are read on screen and filtered by brand, mailbox, assignee, state, priority, tag and date range. CSV export and scheduled report emails are on the roadmap, not shipped, so we will not pretend a download button exists today. If a regular export matters to your team, tell us during onboarding and we will note it.
Are SLA breaches shown in reporting?
SLA timing runs throughout Solves. There is a live Breaching SLA queue view for work in flight, and the ageing and waiting reports show how long tickets have been open or parked. The reports lean on the same first-response and resolution timers as the breaching view, so the numbers match what your team actually sees in the queue.
See your backlog before a customer does
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