Why not track the effort to close a case in support?

In the majority of the technical support centers I have had the opportunity to visit, they have deployed detailed processes for tracking several case “times”. These include initial response time, call back time, time since last contact, resolution time, open case aging, engineering’s response time to escalations and several others. But surprisingly very few actually track the work time or effort a case requires to close or identify as a defect. Interestingly enough, when asked, most center leadership are quick to give you their perception of case effort, but discount obtaining this data given the cost to obtain accurate results. If case effort could be tracked to a reasonable accuracy and cost, how could it be used in managing support? A few things that come to mind:

• Building a defendable resource model requires some estimate of the amount of effort each case requires. Granted support engineers today spend time on more things that just solving cases, but having a good understanding of the effort required to close a case is a key ingredient of the model.
• Providing a better understanding of the cost of product quality by product area or function.
• Providing a meaningful basis for calculating resource time savings from efficiency programs such as knowledge management, training programs or eService initiatives. On the flip side, show the increase in the effort required to close cases after the “known” or easier cases are eliminated by these programs.
• Provide a better method of managing case backlog by using the ratio of case open time to effort to identify cases that may need to be reassigned or targeted for collaboration.
• Understanding the effort reported by a product support team to close cases would also help identify training or coaching opportunities.
• Estimating the work effort in the case backlog, which could be valuable in adjusting the allocation of schedules or requesting assistance to reduce backlogged cases.

Seems to me that “effort” would be a key “time” measurement in understanding your support operations. So is it that difficult to track? Seems to me that this could be accomplished by including a field on the activity record where the engineer can enter the time they spent completing the activity. No need to run a case clock or deploy an integrated timesheet system.

Does your support operation capture and track case effort, if so how do you use it? If you don’t is it just too hard or is it not a key metric for how you run support?