What are the most important metrics to report as a Service manager?

On a cloudy Sunday I was asking Gemini “what are the most important metrics to report as a Service Manager for an IT service provider?”

The answer Google Gemini came up with was:

  • Responsiveness & Efficiency
    • FRT (First response time)
    • MTTR (Mean time to resolve)
    • FCR (First Contact resolution
  • Customer Sentiment
    • CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)
    • NPS (Nett promotor score
  • Reliability & Stability
    • SLA compliance
    • System availability
    • Resource utilization
  • Financial Growth
    • Churn Rate
    • Margin per Client
    • Resource utilization
  • Security and Risk
    • MTTP (Mean Time to Patch
    • Vulnerability Backlog

What does this mean?

Off course, an LLM only predicts words , so the answer is surely not all enclosing. This was a first listing, with the remark that you should always ask “So What?”. Here you should ask the question, if the metric goes up or down, does it change decision making? If the answer is no, toss the metric. With several years of experience as a Service manager for an MSP, some of these metrix where never used, although, not in relation to the Service Management business reporting.

But when reviewing these metrics, I found that when monitoring with the correct tooling, like Zabbix, and the CodeHarbor Report-Engine, you can surely tackle a lot of the recommended metrics. Let’s see what metrics we can tackle.

    What Metrix can we tacle?

    With a correct Monitoring, see our previous post on that topic, you can have a centralised monitoring. Zabbix allows you to monitor the surface, but also to monitor deeper in your environment. Doing so, the CodeHarbor Report-Engine allows you to bring great and insightfull business reports to the boardroom.

    • Responsiveness & Efficiency
      • FRT (First response time): Ony possible when ticketing is also monitored with Zabbix, or when you opt for additional integrations of your ticketing platform to the CodeHarbor Report-Engine.
      • MTTR (Mean time to resolve): Downtime alerts and resolutions can be monitored, thus reported in the Report-Engine. Looking at the long-term picture, the can be measured using the Zabbix SLA reporting
      • FCR (First Contact resolution) Same as FTR
    • Customer Sentiment : Are these relevant metrics? If you provide a good service, the customer will be satisfied. In my view, this should be the result of your efforts and reporting
      • CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)
      • NPS (Nett promotor score
    • Reliability & Stability
      • SLA compliance: Now we are talking. Get out your Report-Engine, and report on any SLA defined in Zabbix
      • System availability: Uptime, downtime, single stats, all available in Zabbix, and thus in the CodeHarbor Report-Engine reports.
      • Resource utilization: One of my absolute favourites. A graph says more than a thousand words. Show your customer the long term usage of resources, the graphs talk for themselves.
    • Financial Growth : Seems to be heavily dependant on the effective service you offer. To me, this is more an internal than a customer metric.
      • Churn Rate
      • Margin per Client
      • Resource utilization
    • Security and Risk : Patchin needs can easely be descripbed via the free fields, available in the Report-Engine reports
      • MTTP (Mean Time to Patch)
      • Vulnerability Backlog

    So when you want to offer additional value to your customer, make sure you report the correct metric. In an understandable and consistent manner. And it might sound like a commercial, but when using Zabbix and the CodeHarbor Report-Engine in a correct way, you can truly report the correct metrics to your customer, showcasing your business’ capabilities.