Skills CX operations
Flow efficiency
Handle time is what agents work. Elapsed time is what customers wait. They diverge — often by an order of magnitude — and most CX reporting only tracks the shorter one.
npx rulebase-skills install cx-flow-efficiencyWhen to use it
Reach for this when someone says any of these — they are the phrases the skill itself triggers on:
- “flow efficiency”
- “touch time vs elapsed time”
- “where is the time going”
- “customers waiting on us”
How it works
The method, in the order the skill runs it. The full procedure — tables, worked examples and the edge cases — is in the skill itself.
Touch time vs elapsed time
For async channels, resolution time is elapsed time; handle time summed across segments is touch time. A ticket with nine minutes of handle and six days elapsed is low flow efficiency — and may still meet SLA if SLA measures first response only.
Decompose before diagnosing
Build a timeline per case or per cohort: First customer contact, First agent engagement (queue wait ends), Each transfer, escalation, or status change, Each outbound request to customer or third party, Each inbound response, Internal resolution (work done, customer not yet told).
Where elapsed time hides
Waiting in queue — visible on voice and chat; often invisible on async if "received" timestamp is first scan not first action.
Flow efficiency without fake precision
Classic lean flow efficiency = touch time ÷ elapsed time. In support, touch time is often incomplete in data (after-contact work in another system, manager approvals offline).
Reading the pattern table
Cross with contact driver. One driver with 80% internal wait is an escalation design problem; another with 80% customer wait may be correct for document collection.
Link to outcomes
Long elapsed with short touch correlates with repeat contact, complaint, and survey dissatisfaction even when handle-time QA scores are high — the customer experienced the idle periods, not the ten active minutes.
Related skills
Free and open source, and vendor-neutral — it reads the conversations from whichever helpdesk you already run. Browse all 149 skills · connect your helpdesk over MCP · source on GitHub
