The Zendesk
Customer Service Benchmark

This, and other customer service analysis, brought to you by the Zendesk Data Science team.

About the Zendesk Benchmark

When it comes to metrics, one size doesn’t fit all. Whether you’re an education institution supporting students and professors, or a social media app supporting millions of users, context matters.

We started the Zendesk Benchmark in November 2010 to give organizations a way to measure their customer service performance against their peers.

It isn’t a survey or an expert opinion—it’s based on actual customer service and support interactions from more than 50,000 participating organizations across 140 countries. See how your team compares with other organizations in your industry.

Turning mountains into molehills

Every day, the Zendesk family of products handles 4.6 million interactions between companies and their customers. That’s a lot of data to explore. Luckily, our Data Science Team is committed to uncovering patterns and insights for our customers. Here’s where you can start to take action.

Real-time channels tend to yield higher customer satisfaction.

Chat sees the highest customer satisfaction rating at 92%, while Twitter sees the lowest at 77%.

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Customers often use their mobile devices to search and reach out for support.

Companies in the media and telecommunications industry use mobile the most.

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Speed of first reply is one of the biggest influencers on customer satisfaction.

As first reply times fall during business hours, customers tend to be more satisfied with the support they received.

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Learn more to understand more

Data doesn’t matter if you don’t know what to look for. With our library of customer experience resources, you can research what matters to you and learn best practices from over 50,000 organizations.

Live Chat
Companies responding to customers on Chat average a first reply time of just 96 seconds.
Operational benchmarks
Sometimes, your peers are not companies in your industry — they’re those with similar operational behaviors.
Behavioral cues
Customers with @yahoo addresses tended to provide lower customer satisfaction ratings than customers with @mac.
Net Promoter Score
NPS survey respondents are more vocal with their feedback, especially those who are detractors.
Analytics
Companies that used analytics can reduce full resolution time by an average of 16%.
Retail and the holidays
Ticket volume can increase as much as 42% over the holidays, causing a drop in customer satisfaction for companies that aren’t prepared.
Customer satisfaction
Customers tended to receive the best service when they contacted companies at 2PM.
Customer self-service
On average, for every customer who opens a support ticket, four customers will choose self-service options.

Join our data community

Every Zendesk customer can participate in the Zendesk Benchmark. Sign up to see where you can grow to deliver a better customer experience.

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