A practical guide to measuring and improving Zendesk agent performance

If you run a support team, you know that agent performance is everything. It’s the core of good customer service, directly impacting how happy your customers are and how efficiently your team runs.

But actually getting a clear view of that performance can be a real headache. While Zendesk is great for managing conversations, its built-in reporting tools can feel clunky. You’re often stuck with basic dashboards that don’t tell the whole story, or you face a steep learning curve trying to build a custom report that gives you the insights you actually need.

This guide is here to help. We'll walk through how to measure Zendesk agent performance, talk honestly about the gaps in Zendesk’s own analytics, and show you how modern AI can help you stop just tracking metrics and start actively improving them.

What is Zendesk agent performance?

So, what do we really mean by Zendesk agent performance? It’s simply a measure of how well your support agents are handling customer tickets within the Zendesk platform.

But it’s not just a single number. Think of it as a combination of three main things:

• Productivity: This is the nuts and bolts of the work. How many tickets is an agent resolving in a day? It’s the raw output of your team.

• Quality: This is all about how well the work gets done. Are customers leaving the conversation happy? Are the solutions accurate? This is where metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores come in.

• Efficiency: This looks at how quickly and smoothly issues are resolved. Is an agent solving a problem on the first try, or are tickets bouncing around for days?

Getting this mix right is what separates an okay support team from a great one. When your agent performance is strong, you see real business results, like customers who stick around longer, lower support costs, and a happier team that doesn't burn out.

How Zendesk measures agent performance out of the box

Zendesk gives you a set of built-in tools to track performance, but they come with some strings attached.

Understanding Zendesk Explore

Zendesk Explore is the platform's analytics tool. It has a bunch of pre-built dashboards, like the ones for Zendesk Support or Agent productivity, that give you a high-level look at ticket volume, resolution times, and agent stats.

These are fine for a quick pulse check, but if you need to dig any deeper, you’ll likely find they don’t quite cut it.

The limits of native Zendesk reporting

While the default dashboards are a decent starting point, they often leave managers wanting more. Here are the limits of native Zendesk reporting.

• They don't tell the whole story. Let’s take a classic metric: Average Handle Time (AHT). A native report might flag an agent with a high AHT, and your first thought is, "Are they working too slowly?" But what the report doesn't show you is that this agent is the one who handles all your gnarliest, most complicated tickets. The metric accidentally punishes them for being an expert.

• The learning curve is no joke. Want to build a custom report in Explore? You'll need to become a part-time data analyst. It requires a pretty deep understanding of Zendesk’s data model, which is time most managers just don't have.

• They’re backward-looking. Zendesk reports are great at telling you what happened last week or last month. What they can't do is help your agents in the moment. They can’t offer real-time suggestions or spot a knowledge gap before it affects ten more customers.

• The data feels disconnected. Your agent performance data might be spread across different dashboards for your support, phone, and chat channels. Trying to get one unified view of how an agent is doing across all platforms can feel like a chore.

Key metrics for Zendesk agent performance

To get a balanced view of your team's health, you need to look at a mix of metrics covering productivity, quality, and efficiency. Staring at just one can be misleading.

Productivity metrics

These numbers tell you about your team's output.

• Tickets solved: The most basic measure. It’s simply the total number of tickets an agent closes over a certain period.

• Replies per conversation: This tracks the average number of replies an agent sends to resolve a ticket. A lower number here usually means agents are knowledgeable and communicating clearly.

Quality metrics

These metrics help you understand if the support you’re providing is actually good.

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): The classic "How did we do?" survey. This gives you direct feedback from the customer on how they felt about their interaction with a specific agent.

• First Contact Resolution (FCR): This is the percentage of tickets solved in a single interaction. A high FCR is a huge win for both agent efficiency and customer happiness. Nobody enjoys a problem that drags on.

• Escalation rate: This shows you how often an agent needs to pass a ticket to a senior team member or another department. A high rate could mean that an agent needs a bit more training in a particular area.

Efficiency metrics

These metrics focus on speed and effort.

• First Reply Time (FRT): This is how long a customer has to wait for that initial response. In a world where everyone expects instant answers, keeping this low is key.

• Average Handle Time (AHT): The average time an agent is actively working on a ticket. It's a useful metric, but again, you have to look at it with the right context.

How to improve Zendesk agent performance with AI

Tracking these metrics is one thing, but actually improving them is another. Relying on manual coaching and sifting through old reports is slow and doesn't scale well. This is where AI tools can make a real difference.

Automate the simple stuff

The problem: Your most skilled agents are probably wasting a good chunk of their day answering the same questions over and over. Think "How do I reset my password?" or "What's your return policy?" It’s draining work that leads to burnout and pulls them away from complex issues where they’re really needed.

The solution: An AI agent can handle these repetitive questions instantly, 24/7. This doesn't just make your team more efficient overall; it also improves the metrics for your human agents. They can finally focus their energy on the tickets that require a human touch.

eesel AI is particularly good at this because it's not a clunky, rule-based bot. It learns directly from your team's past conversations in Zendesk, so it can give nuanced, on-brand answers from day one. You can even use its simulation mode to test it on thousands of your historical tickets and see your exact automation rate before you ever go live.

The eesel AI simulation dashboard allows users to test automation rates on historical tickets, which is crucial for improving Zendesk agent performance.

Give agents an AI Copilot in real time

The problem: Agents waste so much time digging for information. They might have to check a page in Confluence, search through old Google Docs, or ping a teammate in Slack. Every minute they spend searching is a minute added to your handle time and first reply time.

The solution: An AI Copilot works right inside Zendesk alongside your agents, drafting accurate replies based on your entire company knowledge.

This is where a tool like eesel AI really shines. It connects to all of your scattered knowledge sources, from help center articles and past tickets to internal wikis, and turns them into a single source of truth. It slashes research time, helps new agents get up to speed in days instead of weeks, and makes sure every customer gets a consistent, correct answer.

The eesel AI Copilot drafting a response inside a help desk, showcasing a tool that boosts Zendesk agent performance.::The eesel AI Copilot drafting a response inside a help desk, showcasing a tool that boosts Zendesk agent performance.

Get insights you can actually use

The problem: Native Zendesk reports show you what happened, but they rarely tell you why. You might see that your First Contact Resolution rate dipped last month, but you have no easy way to figure out what knowledge gaps are causing it.

The solution: Modern AI reporting tools give you more than just data; they give you a clear path forward.

The analytics dashboard in eesel AI doesn't just track tickets. It highlights the exact questions your AI couldn't answer, instantly showing you where the gaps are in your knowledge base. It can even help you fill those gaps by automatically generating draft help center articles based on successful resolutions from your human agents. This creates a feedback loop that constantly makes both your AI and your team smarter.

The eesel AI analytics dashboard identifies knowledge gaps, offering insights to enhance Zendesk agent performance.::The eesel AI analytics dashboard identifies knowledge gaps, offering insights to enhance Zendesk agent performance.

Zendesk pricing for agent performance reporting

It's worth noting that access to Zendesk's more advanced reporting features is tied to its pricing tiers.

If you want to build custom reports in Explore or see live data, you generally need to be on the Suite Professional plan or higher. Zendesk's own AI add-ons are also bundled into these more expensive plans, which can mean a significant price jump.

Here's a quick look at their plans:

Plan	Price (per agent/month, annually)	Key Performance Features
Suite Team	$55	Prebuilt analytics dashboards, Basic AI agents
Suite Professional	$115	Everything in Team + Customizable reporting, CSAT surveys, SLA management
Suite Enterprise	$169	Everything in Pro + Custom agent roles, Sandbox environment, Advanced AI

Here’s another way to think about it. A tool like eesel AI can give you powerful AI features that often go beyond Zendesk's top tiers, but you can layer it on top of any plan. This means you don't have to force a big, expensive platform upgrade. The pricing is also more straightforward, you pay for what you use, without weird per-resolution fees that can make budgeting a nightmare.

Move from tracking to transforming Zendesk agent performance

At the end of the day, managing Zendesk agent performance isn't about staring at dashboards. It's about building a system where your agents are set up to succeed. That means automating the repetitive tasks, giving them instant access to the knowledge they need, and using data to make smarter coaching decisions.

While Zendesk's native tools offer a starting point, bringing in a dedicated AI platform is the fastest way to help your team reach its full potential.

Ready to see what that looks like? You can connect eesel AI to your Zendesk account in a few minutes and see for yourself how it can help your team. Start your free trial today.