Support metrics glossary
First contact resolution. One touch, and it stays solved.
First contact resolution, or FCR, is the share of resolved tickets that took exactly one touch. The customer wrote in once, got an answer that solved the problem, and never came back. It is the cleanest quality signal in support, and the easiest one to fake.
Last updated 14 August 2026
What first contact resolution means
Count a ticket as resolved on first contact only when two things are true. The first reply solved the problem. And the customer did not re-open the ticket inside an agreed window, commonly 24 to 72 hours. If either part fails, the ticket needed a second touch.
Notice what the definition does not say. It does not say the customer went quiet. A customer who gives up after one useless reply looks exactly like a resolved one in a lazy dashboard. Silence is not resolution.
The formula, with the arithmetic shown
First contact resolution equals tickets resolved in one contact divided by total tickets resolved in the same period, times 100. Divide by tickets received instead and backlog drags the number down, so pick a convention and write it down.
A month with 1,000 resolved tickets and a 72-hour window. In 780 the answer held. In 220 the ticket re-opened inside the window. First contact resolution: 780 divided by 1,000, so 78%.
The re-open window decides your number
Here is where the metric becomes a choice. Common practice is a re-open window of 24 to 72 hours: come back inside it and the first contact failed, come back later and it logs as a new ticket. So the flat version. First contact resolution is the easiest metric in support to flatter, and the window is where it happens. Shrink the window from 72 hours to 24 and your number climbs ten points without one customer getting a better answer. Same month, same tickets, same team:
| Re-open window | Tickets counting as one-contact | FCR |
|---|---|---|
| 24 hours | 880 of 1,000 | 88% |
| 48 hours | 820 of 1,000 | 82% |
| 72 hours | 780 of 1,000 | 78% |
| Every re-open counts | 740 of 1,000 | 74% |
First contact resolution is not resolution rate
Resolution rate answers the simpler question: of the tickets that arrived this period, how many got resolved at all. FCR asks how they got resolved, in one touch or in four. A team can post a 95% resolution rate with a 40% FCR: everything eventually fixed, everything painfully slow. The resolution rate page covers the queue-level number. This page is about the touch count.
The confusion matters because the two move independently. Understaff the queue and resolution rate sinks while FCR holds. Rush the replies and FCR sinks while resolution rate holds. Read them together, or you fix the wrong one.
Raising the number without gaming it
The honest lever is a complete first reply. The agent, human or AI, sees the actual state of the customer's account and answers the specific question, not the policy around it. Order-status questions are the cleanest case: a reply naming the real carrier scan resolves on the spot, which is why WISMO is usually the first queue to fix.
The dishonest levers are all measurement edits. Shrink the window. Close tickets on the agent's reply instead of the customer's confirmation. Mark abandoned chats resolved. Each lifts the dashboard and changes nothing for the customer, which is how the metric earned its credibility problem.
FCR questions, answered straight
What is first contact resolution?
The share of resolved tickets that took one touch: the first reply solved it and the ticket stayed closed through an agreed re-open window, commonly 24 to 72 hours. One contact, lasting fix.
How do you calculate it?
Tickets resolved in one contact divided by total tickets resolved in the period, times 100. 780 one-contact resolutions out of 1,000 resolved tickets is 78%. Divide by tickets received instead and you get a different number, so write your convention down.
What is a good first contact resolution rate?
No honest universal benchmark exists, because the number moves with your window, your channels, and your ticket mix. Password resets will always outscore bug reports. Measure your own baseline and judge every change against it.
What re-open window should I use?
Between 24 and 72 hours, matched to how fast your customers reply. Email queues need longer than chat. Then never change it without restating every historical number, because a window change is a definition change.
Is first contact resolution the same as resolution rate?
No. Resolution rate is tickets resolved divided by tickets received: whether anything gets fixed at all. FCR asks how many of those fixes took one touch. You can resolve everything and still bury customers in follow-ups.
Does a bot answer count toward FCR?
If it truly resolves, yes. A bot that replies without resolving, where the customer simply gives up, is not resolution. It is abandonment wearing a resolution costume, and counting it is how the metric gets gamed.