Glossary
First response time
Definition
First response time (FRT) is the elapsed time between a customer opening a ticket and receiving the first substantive reply.
FRT measures the wait for the first real response - auto-acknowledgements ("we got your email") do not count, because the customer learns nothing from them. It is usually reported as a median, since a few stuck tickets can distort the average.
FRT matters most for transactional questions (order status, cancellations) where the customer is blocked until they hear back. For those, the difference between 4 hours and 40 seconds is the difference between an anxious customer checking spam and one who barely remembers asking.
Why it matters
Speed is the single biggest satisfaction driver for simple tickets, and slow FRT creates compounding volume: customers who wait send follow-ups, open duplicates, and post publicly - each one more work.
How Resolvo HQ approaches it
An AI agent answers the moment the message arrives, on every channel at once - widget, email, or inside your helpdesk. Resolvo HQ resolves the transactional majority in seconds and gives humans a head start (full context, suggested reply) on everything it escalates.
Frequently asked
Do auto-replies count as first response?+
No. An acknowledgement that answers nothing does not stop the customer’s clock. Measure to the first reply that actually addresses the question.
What FRT should an e-commerce store target?+
For automated-eligible tickets: seconds. For human-handled tickets: under a few business hours. Segment the metric - blending AI-instant and human queues into one number hides both.
See it on your own tickets
Replay real tickets in a sandbox and watch the agent resolve them before you pay.