What is cost per resolution?

Why it matters

Cost per ticket rewards closing tickets. Cost per resolution rewards solving problems, which is what the business is buying. The two diverge exactly where it matters: a team that closes tickets fast and generates repeat contacts looks efficient on the first metric and expensive on the second.

What to know

• Include everything: salaries, employer costs, tooling, AI spend, QA, and the share of management time spent on support.
• Divide by resolved issues, not by closed tickets, or repeat contacts will flatter the result.
• Track it monthly. It is a ratio, so it moves when either the numerator or the denominator shifts.
• Segment by issue type before drawing conclusions, since a refund and an integration fault are not comparable.
• It is the right number for comparing an automation investment against a hiring plan.

How to calculate it

An example

Example: total monthly support cost of 42,000 dollars across salaries, tools, and AI, with 6,000 issues genuinely resolved, gives a cost per resolution of seven dollars. Automating a category that costs eleven dollars per resolution is where the saving is.

Common mistakes

• Using closed tickets instead of resolved issues as the denominator
• Leaving out employer costs, which typically add twenty to thirty percent to salary
• Comparing your figure to a published benchmark built on different inclusions
• Reading a single month in isolation rather than the trend

Questions