ZendeskエージェントのパフォーマンスとSLA追跡

Do you ever feel like you’re managing your support team with your eyes closed? One minute things seem fine, and the next, a key customer is angry about slow responses, and you’re digging through reports trying to figure out what went wrong.

If that hits a little too close to home, you’re in the right place. This guide is all about getting a real handle on Zendesk agent performance and SLA tracking. We’ll move beyond just pulling reports and into a more proactive, data-informed way of working. While Zendesk gives you a decent set of tools to start, you’ll often find that an intelligent AI layer is what you need to actually scale and improve things.

What is Zendesk agent performance and SLA tracking?

Let's quickly get on the same page. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are the promises you make to customers about how quickly you'll respond and solve their problems. They set clear expectations. Inside Zendesk, you can even set up Group SLAs (sometimes called OLAs) to manage how quickly work gets passed between your own internal teams.

Agent Performance is bigger than just one number. It’s about looking at an agent's work as a whole: how efficient they are, the quality of their support, and how well they follow your team's processes.

A common trap is to fixate on a single metric like "tickets solved per hour." This is a big mistake. It tells you nothing about how complex those tickets were or if the customer was actually happy with the solution. One agent might be closing dozens of simple password reset tickets while another spends all day on a tricky technical bug. To track performance well, you need to combine these ideas, using SLA data as just one part of the bigger picture.

The native Zendesk toolkit for agent performance and SLA tracking

Zendesk provides a solid foundation for tracking performance right out of the box. Knowing what it can (and can't) do is the first step to figuring out where you might have some gaps.

What Zendesk offers natively

Zendesk's built-in tools are based on two main things: policies and reporting.

• SLA Policies: You can set up specific SLA policies based on things like ticket priority or type, with targets for first reply time or total resolution time. This lets you define what a "good" response time looks like for different kinds of issues.

• Zendesk Explore Dashboards: This is your home base for analytics. The ready-made dashboards give you a good overview of the important metrics. The Tickets & Efficiency tabs help you track ticket volume and response times, while the Satisfaction & SLAs tabs are for keeping an eye on CSAT scores and how often you’re hitting your SLA goals.

• Custom Reporting: If you need to dig deeper, you can build custom reports in Zendesk Explore. It offers a lot of flexibility, but it does have a steep learning curve. You'll need to get pretty comfortable with Zendesk's metrics and formulas to create reports that are truly useful.

Limitations of Zendesk's native tools

While the toolkit is a decent starting point, it has some real limitations that become more obvious as your team grows.

First, it’s almost entirely reactive. Zendesk Explore is great for looking back at what happened last week or last month. But by the time a problem shows up in a report, a customer has already been let down. It’s like driving using only the rearview mirror.

Second, the system can be complicated and inflexible. Building custom reports that actually show what you need to know can feel like a full-time job. You’re often stuck analyzing what Zendesk allows you to see, instead of what you actually need to see to make good decisions.

And maybe the biggest issue is that Zendesk is a data silo. It only knows what happens inside Zendesk. It has no idea if an agent is slow because they can't find the right answer in a Confluence article or are confused by an old process document in Google Docs. That lack of context is a huge blind spot.

This infographic illustrates how eesel AI breaks down data silos by integrating with Zendesk, Confluence, and Google Docs for better agent performance.

This is where tools that connect all your knowledge sources come in handy. For example, an AI platform like eesel AI can link to Zendesk, Confluence, and Google Docs. This gives agents and automation the full picture they need to solve issues faster and more accurately, which directly boosts performance metrics.

Beyond volume: Key metrics for agent performance and SLA tracking

To get a true feel for agent performance, you need a balanced set of metrics. Don't just look at speed; you need to consider efficiency, quality, and process all at once.

Efficiency metrics: Are we working fast?

These numbers tell you how quickly your team is handling tickets. They’re easy to track, but they don't tell the whole story.

• First Reply Time (FRT): How long it takes for an agent to send the first public reply after a ticket is created.

• Total Resolution Time (TRT): The entire time a ticket is open, from start to finish.

• Agent Work Time (AWT): The actual time an agent spends working on a ticket, not including time spent waiting for a customer reply.

The catch: These metrics say nothing about the quality of the work. An agent could have a great FRT by sending out quick, unhelpful replies that don't solve anything, creating more work down the line.

This is a common headache where an AI agent assist tool can make a real difference. The AI Copilot from eesel AI, for instance, can draft high-quality replies in seconds by learning from your team's past tickets. This helps agents improve both their speed and the quality of their first response.

Quality metrics: Are we working smart?

Quality metrics are all about the customer’s experience and whether the problem was actually solved.

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): The most direct way to measure quality, taken straight from customer feedback surveys.

• One-Touch Resolutions: The percentage of tickets solved with just one agent reply. This is a solid indicator of both efficiency and clear communication.

• Reopened Ticket Rate: If a lot of tickets are being reopened, it could mean agents are giving incomplete answers or customers are getting confused.

The catch: Manually reviewing tickets to check for quality takes an incredible amount of time. As your team gets bigger, it becomes almost impossible to do consistently.

Modern AI can help with this. For example, eesel AI can scan all your historical tickets to automatically build a knowledge base, flagging topics where your agents seem to be struggling for answers. It even has a simulation mode that lets you see how much you could automate and what the resolution rate would be, so you can feel confident that quality will stay high.

The eesel AI simulation dashboard shows how automation can improve Zendesk agent performance and SLA tracking.

Adherence and workflow metrics: Are we following the process?

These metrics check if your team is sticking to your established workflows, which is key for providing a consistent experience.

• SLA Achievement Rate: The percentage of tickets that met all of their SLA goals.

• Ticket Triage Accuracy: Are agents correctly tagging tickets, setting the right priority, and sending them to the right team?

The catch: It's nearly impossible to manually track how accurately tickets are being triaged. And by the time you see an SLA breach in a report, the damage is already done.

This kind of process work is perfect for automation. The AI Triage product from eesel AI can automatically tag, route, and even close simple tickets based on their content. This ensures every ticket is handled the same way and frees up your agents to work on more interesting problems. And since you can customize the rules, you stay in complete control of what gets automated.

Understanding Zendesk pricing and tiers

It’s also worth remembering that your ability to track performance in Zendesk is tied directly to your subscription plan. Some of the most important features are only available in the more expensive tiers. This info is based on Zendesk's public pricing as of late 2024.

Zendesk Suite pricing plans

Here’s a quick look at what you get at each level, specifically for performance and SLA tracking.

What pricing means for your tracking strategy

As you can see, the ability to define your own SLAs is only available on the "Suite Professional" plan or higher. If you want to manage internal handoffs with Group SLAs, you have to jump all the way to the "Enterprise" plan.

But here’s the main point: no matter which plan you pay for, the core limitations of Zendesk's native tools, the reactive reporting and the disconnected knowledge, are still there. Paying Zendesk more money doesn't solve the underlying problem.

An external AI platform like eesel AI connects to any Zendesk plan and gives you advanced tools like real-time ticket analysis, automated triage, and access to knowledge from other apps without forcing you to upgrade your entire helpdesk plan. Plus, its pricing is based on usage, not on per-resolution fees, which keeps your costs predictable.

From reactive reports to proactive Zendesk agent performance and SLA tracking

So, what should you take away from all this?

Effective Zendesk agent performance and SLA tracking isn't about finding one magic number. It's about taking a balanced approach and looking at the complete picture of efficiency, quality, and process. While Zendesk’s own tools are a decent place to start, they are often reactive and siloed, which can leave you with some serious blind spots.

To really get ahead, you need to pair Zendesk with intelligent tools that give you real-time insights, bring all your scattered company knowledge together, and automate the repetitive tasks that slow your team down.

Get started with smarter Zendesk agent performance and SLA tracking

eesel AI was built to fill the gaps that tools like Zendesk leave open. It plugs right into your current setup and gives your team a suite of AI tools.

• Go live in minutes: Connect to Zendesk with one click. There’s no complicated setup or months-long implementation project.

• Unify your knowledge: Train your AI on everything, past tickets, Confluence, Google Docs, Slack, and more, to give it the context it needs to be truly helpful.

• Total control: Use the powerful simulation mode to test your AI on past tickets. This lets you build confidence and roll out automation at a pace you're comfortable with.

Ready to move beyond endless spreadsheets and after-the-fact reports? Sign up for eesel AI for free and see how AI can transform your Zendesk performance tracking.