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support-operations skill

/skills/support-operations

This skill guides you in designing ticket management, SLA policies, and escalation workflows to deliver durable customer support improvements.

npx playbooks add skill ncklrs/startup-os-skills --skill support-operations

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SKILL.md
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---
name: support-operations
description: Expert support operations guidance for customer service excellence. Use when designing ticket management systems, creating SLA policies, building support tier structures (L1/L2/L3), optimizing knowledge bases, defining severity levels and escalation procedures, implementing support metrics (CSAT, FRT, TTR, FCR), configuring support tool stacks, or building support-to-CS feedback loops. Covers Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, and help desk best practices.
---

# Support Operations

Strategic support operations expertise for customer-facing teams — from ticket management and SLA design to escalation workflows and self-service optimization.

## Philosophy

Great support isn't about closing tickets fast. It's about **solving customer problems permanently** while building scalable systems.

The best support operations teams:
1. **Prevent before they support** — Self-service and proactive help reduce ticket volume
2. **Measure what drives loyalty** — Resolution quality beats response speed
3. **Escalate with context** — Every handoff preserves customer history
4. **Feed insights upstream** — Support data drives product and success improvements

## How This Skill Works

When invoked, apply the guidelines in `rules/` organized by:

- `ticket-*` — Ticket management, prioritization, queue optimization
- `sla-*` — SLA design, compliance monitoring, escalation triggers
- `tier-*` — Support tier structure, skill-based routing, specialization
- `knowledge-*` — Knowledge base strategy, self-service, deflection
- `metrics-*` — CSAT, FRT, TTR, FCR, quality scoring
- `escalation-*` — Severity definitions, escalation paths, incident management
- `tooling-*` — Support stack optimization, integrations, automation
- `feedback-*` — Support-to-CS handoffs, product feedback loops, voice of customer

## Core Frameworks

### The Support Operations Hierarchy

| Level | Focus | Metrics | Owner |
|-------|-------|---------|-------|
| **Tickets** | Individual resolution | Handle time, CSAT | Agents |
| **Queue** | Flow optimization | Wait time, backlog | Team leads |
| **Channel** | Channel effectiveness | Deflection, containment | Managers |
| **Operations** | System performance | Cost per ticket, NPS | Directors |
| **Strategy** | Business impact | Retention, expansion | VP/C-level |

### The Support Tier Model

```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         TIER 3 (L3)                              │
│  Engineering escalation, code-level issues, custom development  │
│  Target: <5% of tickets | SLA: Best effort                      │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         TIER 2 (L2)                              │
│  Technical specialists, complex troubleshooting, integrations   │
│  Target: 15-25% of tickets | SLA: 4-8 hours                     │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         TIER 1 (L1)                              │
│  First response, common issues, documentation guidance          │
│  Target: 60-80% resolution | SLA: 15-60 minutes                 │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                      SELF-SERVICE (L0)                           │
│  Knowledge base, chatbots, community forums, in-app help        │
│  Target: 30-50% deflection | SLA: Instant                       │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```

### Ticket Priority Matrix

| Priority | Business Impact | Response SLA | Resolution SLA | Examples |
|----------|-----------------|--------------|----------------|----------|
| **P1 Critical** | Complete outage, data loss | 15 min | 4 hours | System down, security breach |
| **P2 High** | Major feature broken | 1 hour | 8 hours | Key workflow blocked |
| **P3 Medium** | Feature impaired | 4 hours | 24 hours | Partial functionality |
| **P4 Low** | Minor issue, cosmetic | 8 hours | 72 hours | UI bug, minor inconvenience |
| **P5 Request** | Feature request, how-to | 24 hours | 5 days | Enhancement, training |

### Support Metrics Framework

| Metric | Definition | Target | Warning |
|--------|------------|--------|---------|
| **CSAT** | Customer satisfaction score | 90%+ | <85% |
| **FRT** | First response time | <1 hour | >4 hours |
| **TTR** | Time to resolution | <24 hours | >72 hours |
| **FCR** | First contact resolution | 70%+ | <50% |
| **NPS** | Net promoter score | 30+ | <10 |
| **Ticket Volume** | Tickets per 100 customers | 5-15 | >25 |
| **Deflection Rate** | Self-service success | 30-50% | <20% |
| **Escalation Rate** | Tickets escalated | 10-20% | >30% |
| **Reopen Rate** | Tickets reopened | <5% | >10% |
| **Agent Utilization** | Productive time | 70-80% | <60% or >90% |

### The Ticket Lifecycle

```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                  │
│  NEW → TRIAGED → ASSIGNED → IN PROGRESS → PENDING → RESOLVED   │
│                                    │          │                  │
│                                    ▼          ▼                  │
│                              ESCALATED    WAITING                │
│                                    │     (Customer)              │
│                                    ▼                             │
│                              ENGINEERING                         │
│                                                                  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```

### Channel Strategy Matrix

| Channel | Best For | Cost | Scalability | Personal |
|---------|----------|------|-------------|----------|
| **Self-service** | Common issues | Lowest | Highest | Lowest |
| **Chatbot** | Quick questions | Low | High | Low |
| **Live chat** | Real-time help | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| **Email/Ticket** | Complex issues | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| **Phone** | Urgent/sensitive | High | Low | High |
| **Video** | Technical demos | High | Low | Highest |

## Severity Levels

| Severity | Definition | Escalation Path | Communication |
|----------|------------|-----------------|---------------|
| **SEV1** | System-wide outage | Immediate to engineering + exec | Status page, proactive email |
| **SEV2** | Major feature broken | 1 hour to L3 | Affected users notified |
| **SEV3** | Feature degraded | 4 hours to L2 | Standard ticket updates |
| **SEV4** | Minor impact | Normal queue | Standard ticket updates |

## Key Formulas

### Cost Per Ticket
```
Cost Per Ticket = (Total Support Cost) / (Total Tickets Handled)
Target: $5-25 depending on complexity
```

### Support Capacity Planning
```
Required Agents = (Ticket Volume × Handle Time) / (Available Hours × Utilization Rate)

Example:
(500 tickets × 20 min) / (8 hours × 60 min × 0.75) = 28 agents
```

### Self-Service ROI
```
Savings = (Deflected Tickets × Cost Per Ticket) - Self-Service Investment
```

## Anti-Patterns

- **Speed over quality** — Fast wrong answers create repeat contacts
- **Ticket tennis** — Multiple handoffs without resolution
- **Knowledge hoarding** — Solutions in heads, not documentation
- **Metric gaming** — Closing tickets prematurely to hit targets
- **Escalation avoidance** — L1 struggling when L2 is needed
- **Channel forcing** — Making customers switch channels unnecessarily
- **Copy-paste responses** — Generic answers that don't address the issue
- **Invisible backlog** — Tickets aging without visibility
- **No feedback loop** — Support insights never reach product
- **Over-automation** — Bots handling issues that need humans

Overview

This skill provides expert support operations guidance to design and run high-performing customer service teams. It focuses on ticket lifecycle design, SLA and severity frameworks, support tiering (L0–L3), knowledge base strategy, metrics, escalation processes, and tooling for Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, and similar platforms. Use it to build scalable, measurable support systems that reduce volume and improve resolution quality.

How this skill works

The skill applies a set of practical rules and frameworks organized by functional areas: ticket management, SLA design, tier routing, knowledge strategy, metrics, escalation, tooling, and feedback loops. It recommends concrete matrices and targets (priority/response SLAs, severity definitions, deflection targets, CSAT/FRT/TTR thresholds) and gives formulas for capacity planning and cost-per-ticket. It also highlights anti-patterns and corrective actions to keep operations efficient and customer-centric.

When to use it

  • Designing ticket queues, priority matrices, and routing logic
  • Creating SLA policies and escalation triggers for outages and incidents
  • Defining L0–L3 support tiers and skill-based routing
  • Optimizing knowledge base content, self-service, and deflection
  • Choosing or integrating Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, or automation tools

Best practices

  • Prioritize resolution quality over raw speed; measure reopen rate and CSAT, not just handle time
  • Define clear severity and escalation paths that preserve context and customer history
  • Push repeatable issues into self-service and measure deflection rate regularly
  • Use skill-based routing for L2/L3 to reduce ticket tennis and preserve expertise
  • Instrument metrics (CSAT, FRT, TTR, FCR) with targets and alerts tied to SLAs
  • Create a formal feedback loop so support insights feed product and success teams

Example use cases

  • Draft an SLA table mapping P1–P5 to response and resolution SLAs and example scenarios
  • Design an L1/L2/L3 routing plan that targets 60–80% L1 resolution and <5% L3 volume
  • Build a knowledge base migration plan that aims for 30–50% deflection
  • Estimate staffing using capacity planning formula to determine required agents
  • Configure escalation playbooks for SEV1/SEV2 incidents with comms templates

FAQ

What metrics should I track first?

Start with CSAT, First Response Time (FRT), Time to Resolution (TTR), and First Contact Resolution (FCR). Add deflection rate and reopen rate as you implement self-service.

How do I set SLA targets?

Align SLAs to business impact: P1 critical needs minutes and executive alerts, P2–P3 scale by severity. Use targets in the support metrics framework and adjust by capacity and priority mix.