Customer Support Department Performance Indicators
Executive Summary
| KPI | Health | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Support Satisfaction (SSAT) | Attention |
|
| Manager to customer support rep ratio | Okay |
|
| Service Level Agreement (SLA) | Attention |
|
| Data Privacy Requests - Service Level Agreement (SLA) | Attention |
|
| Customer Support Margin | Okay |
|
| Customer Wait Times | Okay |
|
| Support Handbook MR Rate | Okay |
|
| Support MR Rate | Problem |
|
| Support Team Member Retention | Okay |
|
| Support Average Age of Open Positions | Unknown |
|
Key Performance Indicators
Support Satisfaction (SSAT)
A measure of how satisfied our customers’ are with their interaction with the GitLab Support team. This is based on survey responses from customers after each ticket is solved by the Support team using a Good or Bad rating.
Target: At or above 95% Health:Attention
- SSAT is very good (above 93%) but target is 95%.
- Collecting feedback from dissatisfied customers to identify trends.
- Support Managers review trends to create changes to workflows and/or training.
Chart
Manager to customer support rep ratio
The Manager to IC Ratio is the ratio of individual contributors to one manager. This data comes from Bamboo HR.
Target: The target for this metric is at or below 10:1 Health:Okay
- While we have an overall ratio of less than 10:1 as a department at time of this evaluation, we have re-balanced the larger imbalance in EMEA with new management in place.
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Service Level Agreement (SLA)
GitLab Support commits to an initial substantive response in a specified amount of time from the time the customer submits a ticket. The SLA for this first reply is based on each customer’s Support Plan.
Target: At or above 95% to Priority Support SLAs Health:Attention
- Inconsistent performance to a 95% target achievement.
- Focused staffing to key time gaps with higher level of ticket SLA breaches.
- Adjusting workflow to enable working with customers in their preferred timezone.
- Working with the data team on understanding the inconsistent we see between our ZenDesk SLA data and Periscope via 2857
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URL(s):
Data Privacy Requests - Service Level Agreement (SLA)
GitLab Support responds to Data Subject Requests in an amount of time required by the laws of various governing bodies. The SLA for these requests is determined by the legal team.
Target: At or above 95% SLAs Health:Attention
- Inconsistent performance to 30 day resolution targets
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URL(s):
Customer Support Margin
Total Support headcount and non-headcount expenses as a percent of ARR.
Target: Headcount and non-headcount expenses to be at or below 10% of ARR Health:Okay
- Tracked and reported monthly, and for the year we are under our margin target for spend.
- Maintain focus on spend while iterating on needs for non-headcount expense requirements.
Customer Wait Times
The following KPI tracks the ratio between the median “Resolution Time” and the total median “Customer Wait Time” per ticket. “Resolution Time” is defined as the amount of time between the ticket creation and the last ticket communication. “Customer Wait Time” is defined as the total amount of time the ticket spends in the “Open” & “New” states over the tickets life cycle.
Target: At or below 35% Health:Okay
- TBD
Chart
Support Handbook MR Rate
The handbook is essential to working remote successfully, to keeping up our transparency, and to recruiting successfully. Our processes are constantly evolving and we need a way to make sure the handbook is being updated at a regular cadence. This data is retrieved by querying the API with a python script for merge requests that have files matching /source/handbook/support/** over time.
Target: 0.5 Health:Okay
- above target
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Support MR Rate
Support Department MR Rate is not directly a key performance indicator used to indicate productivity of our Support team members. Nonetheless, we want to track the average MR merged per team member to encourage updates to Documentation and Support ‘fixes’. We currently count all members of the Support Department (Director, EMs, ICs) in the denominator because this is a team effort. The full definition of MR Rate is linked in the url section.
Target: At or above 1 MRs per Month Health:Problem
- TBD
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Support Team Member Retention
We need to be able to retain talented team members. Retention measures our ability to keep them sticking around at GitLab. Team Member Retention = (1-(Number of Team Members leaving GitLab/Average of the 12 month Total Team Member Headcount)) x 100. GitLab measures team member retention over a rolling 12 month period.
Target: at or above 84% This KPI cannot be public Health:Okay
- above target
Support Average Age of Open Positions
Measures the average time job openings take from open to close. This metric includes sourcing time of candidates compared to Time to Hire or Time to Offer Accept which only measures the time from when a candidate applies to when they accept.
Target: at or below 50 days Unknown
- new metric, monitoring progress
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Regular Performance Indicators
Support Performance to Operating Plan
Tracks overall Support spend against expectations from GitLab’s Operational Plan.
Target: at or within 5% of Fiscal Year Operating plan Unknown
- This is a new proposed PI
- Data is currently tracked in a spreadsheet.
Support Department Discretionary Bonus Rate
The number of discretionary bonuses given divided by the total number of team members, in a given period as defined. This metric definition is taken from the People Success Discretionary Bonuses KPI.
Target: at or above 10% Health:Attention
- Metric is new and is being monitored
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Support Department Promotion Rate
The total number of promotions over a rolling 12 month period divided by the month end headcount. The target promotion rate is 12% of the population. This metric definition is taken from the People Success Team Member Promotion Rate PI.
Target: 12% Health:Okay
- Metric is new and is being monitored
- Between Dec 2019 and Nov 2020, we had a one time change for a group of Service Agents to Support Engineers. Due to this change, the promotion rate is higher in those months. Aug 2020 through Nov 2020 have been corrected to reflect this.
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Legends
Health
| Value | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Okay | The KPI is at an acceptable level compared to the threshold |
| 2 | Attention | This is a blip, or we’re going to watch it, or we just need to enact a proven intervention |
| 1 | Problem | We'll prioritize our efforts here |
| -1 | Confidential | Metric & metric health are confidential |
| 0 | Unknown | Unknown |
How pages like this work
Data
The heart of pages like this are Performance Indicators data files which are YAML files. Each - denotes a dictionary of values for a new (K)PI. The current elements (or data properties) are:
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
name |
Required | String value of the name of the (K)PI. For Product PIs, product hierarchy should be separate from name by " - " (Ex. {Stage Name}:{Group Name} - {PI Type} - {PI Name} |
base_path |
Required | Relative path to the performance indicator page that this (K)PI should live on |
definition |
Required | refer to Parts of a KPI |
parent |
Optional | should be used when a (K)PI is a subset of another PI. For example, we might care about Hiring vs Plan at the company level. The child would be the division and department levels, which would have the parent flag. |
target |
Required | The target or cap for the (K)PI. Please use Unknown until we reach maturity level 2 if this is not yet defined. For GMAU, the target should be quarterly. |
org |
Required | the organizational grouping (Ex: Engineering Function or Development Department). For Product Sections, ensure you have the word section (Ex : Dev Section) |
section |
Optional | the product section (Ex: dev) as defined in sections.yml |
stage |
Optional | the product stage (Ex: release) as defined in stages.yml |
group |
Optional | the product group (Ex: progressive_delivery) as defined in stages.yml |
category |
Optional | the product group (Ex: feature_flags) as defined in categories.yml |
is_key |
Required | boolean value (true/false) that indicates if it is a (key) performance indicator |
health |
Required | indicates the (K)PI health and reasons as nested attributes. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. |
health.level |
Optional | indicates a value between 0 and 3 (inclusive) to represent the health of the (K)PI. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. |
health.reasons |
Optional | indicates the reasons behind the health level. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one reason. |
urls |
Optional | list of urls associated with the (K)PI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one url |
funnel |
Optional | indicates there is a handbook link for a description of the funnel for this PI. Should be a URL |
public |
Optional | boolean flag that can be set to false where a (K)PI does not meet the public guidelines. |
pi_type |
Optional | indicates the Product PI type (Ex: AMAU, GMAU, SMAU, Group PPI) |
product_analytics_type |
Optional | indicates if the metric is available on SaaS, SM (self-managed), or Both. |
is_primary |
Optional | boolean flag that indicates if this is the Primary PI for the Product Group. |
implementation |
Optional | indicates the implementation status and reasons as nested attributes. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. |
implementation.status |
Optional | indicates the Implementation Status status. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. |
implementation.reasons |
Optional | indicates the reasons behind the implementation status. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one reason. |
lessons |
Optional | indicates lessons learned from a K(PI) as a nested attribute. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. |
lessons.learned |
Optional | learned is an attribute that can be nested under lessonsand indicates lessons learned from a K(PI). This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one lesson learned |
monthly_focus |
Optional | indicates monthly focus goals from a K(PI) as a nested attribute. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. |
monthly_focus.goals |
Optional | indicates monthly focus goals from a K(PI). This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one goal |
metric_name |
Optional | indicates the name of the metric in Self-Managed implemenation. The SaaS representation of the Self-Managed implementation should use the same name. |
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