Requester Wait Time is the total combined time a ticket spends in the new, open, and on-hold statuses, measured until the ticket reaches a pending, solved, or closed status. It excludes pending time, which is when the ticket is waiting on the requester to reply, making it a direct measure of support team responsiveness rather than total ticket lifespan.
A user submits a ticket at 9:00 AM. A support agent is assigned and the ticket moves through new and open statuses. At 10:00 AM the agent replies and the ticket moves to pending — the user now needs to respond.
At 12:00 PM the user replies, reopening the ticket to open status. At 2:00 PM the agent fully resolves the issue and marks the ticket as solved.
Requester Wait Time = 1 hour (9:00–10:00 AM) + 2 hours (12:00–2:00 PM) = 3 hours
The 2-hour pending window (10:00 AM–12:00 PM) is excluded because the requester — not the support team — was responsible for the delay.
Why Requester Wait Time matters
Customers don't experience your internal workflows. They experience how long they wait. Requester Wait Time captures exactly that: the cumulative delay the customer feels while waiting for your team to act.
Unlike Full Resolution Time, which includes all time from ticket creation to closure, Requester Wait Time isolates your team's contribution to the wait. This makes it a cleaner signal for evaluating support team performance and identifying where processes slow down.
High Requester Wait Time often points to staffing gaps, routing inefficiencies, or tickets sitting unattended in a queue. Low Requester Wait Time signals a team that responds quickly and keeps work moving.
Requester Wait Time vs. related metrics
Support teams track several time-based metrics, and it helps to know what each one measures.
| Metric | What it measures | Includes pending time? |
|---|
| Requester Wait Time | Time in new, open, and on-hold statuses | No |
| Full Resolution Time | Total time from ticket creation to solved/closed | Yes |
| First Reply Time | Time from ticket creation to first agent response | No |
| On-Hold Time | Time in on-hold status only | No |
Requester Wait Time is the most direct measure of how long the requester waits for the team to act. First Reply Time captures only the initial response; Full Resolution Time captures everything, including time the customer spent not responding.
How to use Requester Wait Time in practice
Set meaningful targets
A useful starting point is to benchmark Requester Wait Time against your service level agreements (SLAs) or customer expectations. If your SLA promises a response within 4 hours, tickets with Requester Wait Time exceeding that threshold need attention.
Segment the metric by ticket type, priority level, or support channel. A billing issue may have a tighter acceptable wait time than a general product question. Treating all tickets the same obscures where your team is falling short.
Identify queue and routing problems
Spikes in Requester Wait Time often trace back to specific points in the ticket lifecycle. If tickets consistently accumulate wait time in the new status, the problem is likely initial triage or assignment. If wait time builds in the open status, agents may be overloaded or lacking the information to resolve tickets quickly.
Review tickets with the highest Requester Wait Times regularly. Look for patterns: ticket category, time of day, agent workload, or missing information that stalls progress.
Track trends over time
A single snapshot of Requester Wait Time tells you little. Track the metric weekly or monthly to spot trends. Rising averages may signal growing ticket volume without corresponding staffing. Declining averages confirm that process changes are working.
Pair Requester Wait Time with customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) to understand the relationship between wait time and customer experience. In most support environments, longer wait times correlate with lower satisfaction — but the threshold varies by customer segment and issue type.
Common challenges
Misclassifying ticket statuses. Requester Wait Time depends entirely on accurate status tracking. If agents leave tickets in open status when they should be pending — or forget to update status after taking action — the metric becomes unreliable. Consistent status hygiene is a prerequisite for meaningful data.
Averaging across dissimilar tickets. A single average Requester Wait Time across all ticket types can mask important variation. A complex technical issue will naturally take longer than a password reset. Use segmentation to make comparisons meaningful.
Confusing Requester Wait Time with Full Resolution Time. Teams sometimes use these interchangeably, but they measure different things. Requester Wait Time holds the support team accountable for their portion of the delay. Full Resolution Time reflects the entire lifecycle. Conflating the two leads to misleading performance assessments.
