Support reporting technology

Choose support reporting technology by starting with the questions the reports must answer, then checking what each chart counts.

Define the tickets or conversations included, the events that start and end a measure, and whether you can inspect the records behind a result.

A dashboard label alone is not a shared definition.

Decide what each report is for

A queue report helps a supervisor find work needing attention now. A service report describes a defined set of customer interactions. A trend report helps the team investigate change over time. They may draw on the same records but use different dates and populations.

Keep the unit, date range, reporting time zone, channels, filters and time anchor beside each chart. For an Australian team covering several states, a stated time zone makes a period such as “yesterday” clear.

Critical reporting definitions for Australian teams

Check the underlying events

A first response needs a customer contact and a qualifying reply. Resolution needs a defined completion event. Reopening needs a transition after that event.

Ask whether automated acknowledgements, internal notes, bot activity, merged records and cases with no human reply enter each measure. Check whether the clock uses elapsed time or configured service hours.

A fast first response does not imply a fast resolution. A case can receive a prompt reply and then wait for investigation. A case closed without a qualifying reply may enter a closure count while having no measured first-response duration. Show unmeasured cases alongside the time figure.

For a percentage, inspect both counts. A satisfaction score based on rated surveys describes respondents. An SLA chart may count target instances rather than distinct tickets.

Compare reporting capabilities in the proposed plan

Zendesk Explore

Zendesk is a candidate when ticket lifecycle and status changes are central to reporting. Explore provides separate datasets for general ticket information, ticket changes and updates, backlog history, SLAs and group SLAs. In the Tickets dataset, metrics include total tickets, solved tickets and reopened tickets after being solved.

Its prebuilt dashboards are read-only; creating or customising dashboards requires Explore Professional or Enterprise. Check the proposed account's entitlement and report permissions. Its reopened-ticket count identifies tickets reopened after being solved, not why the customer returned.

Freshdesk Analytics

Freshdesk is a candidate for ticket volume, SLA and lifecycle reporting within its helpdesk. Its Analytics uses metrics, attributes and filters, and common calculation conditions apply only to tickets assigned to an agent or a group. Public notes and replies count as responses in most cases.

Curated reports vary by tier and account experience. The current plan matrix lists custom reporting for Pro and Enterprise, not Free or Growth. Confirm the exact product, plan and account experience before relying on a report.

Intercom Reports

Intercom is a candidate when support work is organised around conversations. Its conversation dataset provides details at the conversation level, including the conversation ID, its current state, the communication channel used and the assignee.

Creating custom reports requires an Advanced or Expert plan and the relevant permission. Most conversation metrics require a customer message, while metrics anchored to conversation creation can also include outbound conversations without one. Specify the metric, timestamp and population before comparing it with a ticket-based figure.

Help Scout Reports

Help Scout is a candidate for teams working from shared inbox conversations and wanting built-in email reporting on response time and handle time. In its Email report, response time is an average based on filters, and handle time measures the time from when the conversation is opened to when a reply is sent to the customer.

Report Views are available on Standard, Plus and Pro with the relevant permission. In the Email report, Standard plans can report on the last 2 years of data, while Plus and Pro plans can report on data for the lifetime of the account. Check the available period and fields against the team's reporting brief.

The Tickets dataset excludes deleted tickets, and its reopened-ticket metric does not include a ticket solved and reopened during the same update.

Freshdesk distinguishes historic metrics, based on ticket events during the period in which each metric is taken, from current metrics, which reflect the ticket's current state rather than its status history.

Freshdesk Analytics counts only the primary ticket when records are merged; secondary tickets are excluded from reporting. This can explain why Analytics counts differ from the ticket list, where secondary tickets remain visible. If an older ticket is merged into a newer one, the initial response time can sometimes be negative because responses from the secondary ticket are integrated into the primary.

Intercom's custom-report builder offers more than 100 chart templates and a drill-in feature for exploring data behind a chart. When setting up a report, specify the timestamp and aggregation as well as the metric, so the chart's date grouping and summary match the question being asked.

Help Scout Report Views can filter data in most reports by inbox, tag, folder or custom fields. Creating and managing Views requires the Manage Views permission, while users with other report permissions can use Views in reports.

Decide whether a report is usable

Ask each vendor to explain where an unanswered contact, a solved case that returns, a bot handoff and a case spanning a reporting boundary would appear. For each chart, establish which event dates the record is based on and whether the underlying cases can be inspected.

Record any measure the proposed setup cannot produce directly and the work needed to calculate it. Before acting on a trend, inspect sample cases and changes to staffing, channel coverage, automation or report settings that could have changed the population.

Check whether a measure represents current records or events that occurred in the selected period; treating those as interchangeable can change the meaning of a trend.

Read the reporting model behind the chart

A report's time anchor can change which interactions appear in a period. Intercom custom reports let you choose a metric and its timestamp, then group results using available aggregations such as average, median, percentile, minimum, maximum or sum.

Intercom also supports relative date ranges, which move with the reporting date, and fixed date ranges, which continue to show the selected dates. For time-based metrics, custom interval buckets can show how results are distributed across ranges chosen by the team.