How Outsourcing Vendors Manipulate Incident Response Time Metrics

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Incident response time is a core metric in IT outsourcing, intended to measure how quickly support teams begin addressing an issue after it’s reported. However, some outsourcing vendors manipulate this metric to appear more responsive on paper than they truly are. This deceptive practice creates a false sense of reliability and may prevent clients from identifying true service gaps, ultimately compromising end-user satisfaction.

Incident response times are often manipulated by vendors, obscuring genuine responsiveness and undermining service quality.
When response metrics are distorted, clients are misled into believing service levels are being met, masking delays and inefficiencies that impact user experience and business continuity.
By implementing robust operational analytics to track actual work start times, clients can gain clarity, expose any metric manipulation, and hold vendors accountable.

Key Manipulation Tactics

Vendors may use the following tactics to create artificially favorable response times:

Automated Pre-Assignment: Using automation to assign tickets to a technician immediately upon entering the resolver group’s queue, stopping the response time clock without actual action being taken.
False Statuses: Moving tickets to statuses like “work in progress” without any actual progress, creating an impression of prompt response.
Queue Cycling: Reassigning tickets across teams to manipulate or restart response clocks, particularly within more complex SLAs.
Preemptive Assignments to Busy Technicians: Assigning tickets to technicians who are not immediately available, merely to stop the response timer.

Business Impact

When vendors manipulate response times, it leads to several negative outcomes:

Eroded Client Trust: Misrepresentation of metrics breaks down client-vendor trust.
Operational Inefficiencies: Real issues go unnoticed, resulting in hidden costs and escalated problems.
End-User Dissatisfaction: Delays and poor service response times frustrate end-users, impacting client reputation and loyalty.
Risk of Non-Compliance: Misreported metrics could expose the client to compliance risks, especially if accurate reporting is required by regulatory bodies.

Mitigation Strategies

To counteract these tactics, clients can:

Audit Response Times: Regularly audit response times by correlating ticket assignment times with the actual start of work.
Implement Detailed Analytics: Use operational analytics to track patterns in ticket handling, identifying potential areas of manipulation.
Contractual Clarity: Define clear, measurable SLA terms and include penalties for manipulation or lack of transparency.
Mandate Activity Logs: Require detailed logs that verify when technicians begin meaningful work on each ticket.
Enable Independent Monitoring: Use third-party monitoring or in-house tools to validate response time metrics independently.

Conclusion

Clients can safeguard their service quality by adopting proactive monitoring, leveraging analytics, and establishing clear expectations. While outsourcing vendors play a valuable role in IT support, transparency and accountability are essential to ensure they truly meet service needs, benefiting the end-users and maintaining client satisfaction.

For more on outsourcing risks, check out this blog post.

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About the Author

Imad Lodhi

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