How to create a Zendesk report for first reply time in business hours only (2025 guide)

Let’s be honest, trying to build a custom report in Zendesk can sometimes feel like you need a data science degree just to get a straight answer. You have a simple, important question: "How quickly are we actually responding to customers during work hours?" But digging that number out of Zendesk Explore often involves a maze of menus, schedules, and settings. It’s a common headache that leaves a lot of support teams feeling like they’re flying blind.

This guide is here to cut through the confusion. We’ll walk you through the exact steps to build a Zendesk report for first reply time in business hours only. Just as importantly, we’ll talk about why this manual approach has its limits and how modern AI tools can help you shift from just reporting on response times to actually improving them.

What is first reply time and why do business hours matter?

First Reply Time, or FRT, is one of those bread-and-butter customer service metrics. It measures the time between a customer sending a ticket and an agent sending back that first public reply. Think of it as a direct measure of your team's attentiveness. A speedy FRT tells customers you're on the ball and you value their time, which goes a long way in building trust.

But here’s the catch: raw FRT data can be pretty misleading. If you calculate it in calendar hours, you're including nights, weekends, and holidays in your total. This can seriously inflate your numbers and make your team's performance look a lot worse than it actually is. Nobody wants to get dinged for a slow response to a ticket that came in at 3 AM on a Saturday.

That’s why reporting on FRT in business hours is so important. It gives you a true-to-life picture of your team's efficiency when they're actually at their desks. This leads to fairer performance conversations, smarter decisions about staffing, and goals that are actually achievable.

How to set up a Zendesk report for first reply time in business hours only

Getting an accurate business-hours FRT report in Zendesk isn't quite a one-click affair. You need to configure three different parts of the system in the right order: Schedules, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and finally, the Explore report itself. Let's break it down.

Step 1: Create your schedule

First things first, you need to tell Zendesk when you're open for business. If you have teams in different time zones, no problem, you can create multiple schedules to cover everyone.

1. Find the Schedules section: In the Admin Center, head over to Objects and rules > Business rules > Schedules.

2. Add your new schedule: This is where you'll define your working hours for each day of the week. You can also add holidays to make sure specific dates are excluded from your metrics. Be precise here, because this schedule is the foundation for everything else we're about to do.

Step 2: Create an SLA policy

Okay, with your schedule set, the next piece of the puzzle is an SLA policy. SLAs are basically rules that tell Zendesk which metrics to track and what your team's targets are.

1. Go to SLA Policies: Back in the Admin Center, you'll find this under Objects and rules > Business rules > Service level agreements.

2. Make a new policy: Give it a clear name that you'll recognize later, like "Standard FRT - Business Hours."

3. Set the conditions: Decide which tickets this policy should apply to. You might, for example, apply it only to tickets coming from a certain email address or for a specific brand you manage.

4. Set the target: Under the "Targets" section, add a target for First reply time. Now, here’s the key part: change the metric from "Calendar hours" to "Business hours" and choose the schedule you created in the first step. Finally, set your time goal (for example, 4 business hours).

Step 3: Build your report in Explore

Now that Zendesk is busy tracking FRT in business hours, you can build a report to see the data in action.

1. Open up Explore: Head to the Explore module and start a new report. You'll want to choose the Support - Tickets dataset.

2. Add your metric: In the "Metrics" panel on the right, click "Add." Search for and select First reply time - Business hours (min).

3. Add your attributes: In the "Columns" or "Rows" panel, add attributes to slice and dice your data. A popular choice is Ticket created - Date to see how your FRT is trending over time.

4. Filter your data: Use filters to zoom in on the information you need. For example, you could filter by Ticket created - Week to see how the team did last week.

The hidden costs and limits of manual reporting

So, you can get the report you need. But as you just saw, it’s a bit of a process. This workflow highlights some of the deeper challenges you run into when relying only on Zendesk's built-in tools.

• It's complicated and rigid: Getting one important metric requires jumping between three different systems (Schedules, SLAs, Explore). They're powerful, sure, but they aren't exactly user-friendly. And if your business hours ever change, you have to go back and tweak the whole setup.

• It’s reactive, not proactive: The biggest issue is that reports are always looking in the rearview mirror. A high FRT on your dashboard is just a number that represents past customer frustration. By the time you see the problem, the damage is already done. The report tells you that you were slow, but it doesn't help you prevent the delay in the first place.

• It doesn't tell you "why": Zendesk reports can show you that response times are slipping, but they can't tell you the reason. Are your agents struggling to find the right information? Did the ticket get routed to the wrong person? You still have to go digging for those answers yourself.

• It requires an expert: Let’s be real, building and managing these reports often becomes the job of one dedicated "Zendesk person" on the team. For many support teams, that's a luxury they don't have, which means they're often stuck using inaccurate calendar-hour data or just guessing.

These aren't just small annoyances. They put a cap on how efficient your support team can really be. You end up spending too much time trying to build reports instead of fixing the root causes of the delays.

Beyond reporting: How AI improves first reply time automatically

This is where things get interesting. Instead of just tracking delays, what if you could prevent them from happening in the first place? This is the shift that AI-powered platforms like eesel AI bring to the table. Rather than replacing your helpdesk, eesel plugs directly into your existing Zendesk workflow in just a few minutes, giving you tools to automate responses and help your agents out.

Here’s how an AI layer directly addresses the limitations we just talked about:

• Instant resolutions: You know what the fastest first reply is? An instant one. The eesel AI Agent can learn from your past tickets, help center, and other knowledge bases (like Confluence or Google Docs) to solve common customer questions on its own, 24/7. This doesn't just lower your FRT; for a big chunk of tickets, it gets rid of it completely.

• Help for your agents: For tickets that do need a human touch, the eesel AI Copilot acts like a personal assistant for your agents, drafting accurate, on-brand replies for them. This massively cuts down on the time agents spend typing out the same answers or hunting for information, letting them focus on solving tougher problems.

• Intelligent routing: A slow response often happens just because a ticket is sitting in the wrong person's queue. eesel AI Triage can instantly read, categorize, tag, and route incoming tickets to the right agent or department. This makes sure every single issue gets seen by the right person right away.

• Simple, self-serve setup: Unlike the multi-step process in Zendesk, you can connect your helpdesk and knowledge sources to eesel AI with a few clicks. It even has a powerful simulation mode that lets you test the AI on your historical tickets. You can see your potential automation rate and how the AI would have responded before you ever show it to a single customer. You can roll it out with confidence, not guesswork.

Instead of just handing you a report that points out a problem, eesel AI gives you the tools to solve it at the source.

Zendesk pricing

Of course, to get access to features like SLAs and advanced reporting in Zendesk Explore, you generally need to be on one of their higher-tier plans. Here’s a quick snapshot of their standard annual pricing for the Zendesk Suite. It's also worth noting that many of their advanced AI features are sold as paid add-ons.

Plan	Price (per agent/month, billed annually)	Key Features for Reporting
Suite Team	$55	Prebuilt analytics dashboards, 1 help center
Suite Professional	$115	Everything in Team + Service level agreements (SLAs), Established business hours, Customizable reporting
Suite Enterprise	$169	Everything in Professional + Custom agent roles, Audit logs, Live agent activity dashboards

This pricing is based on information from Zendesk's website as of late 2024 and may change. For the full breakdown, it's always best to check out the official Zendesk pricing page.

Stop just reporting on problems, start solving them

Measuring your first reply time in business hours is a huge step toward understanding how your team is really performing. And as we've walked through, you can absolutely create a Zendesk report for first reply time in business hours only. But the process itself is a good reminder that traditional helpdesk reporting is, by its nature, reactive. It’s built to show you yesterday’s problems.

Today, the best support teams are shifting their focus from reaction to prevention. They're using AI not just as a tool for analysis, but as an active, helpful member of their support engine. By automating the simple stuff and giving agents instant access to knowledge, you can do a lot more than just chip away at your FRT, you can deliver the kind of fast, amazing service that customers have come to expect.

If you feel like you're spending too much time staring at complex dashboards and are ready to see real-time improvements, it might be time to see what a dedicated AI layer can do for you.

Ready to see how AI can transform your support workflows? Try eesel AI for free and see how easily you can bring powerful automation into the helpdesk you already use. You can be live in minutes, not months.