Composite: SLA attainment x CSAT x (inverse) backlog growth x first-response speed.
At a glance
Support Health Score is the single number Blitz’s support lead and founder check first thing in the morning. It rolls four independent signals from your Intercom workspace — how often you hit your first-response SLA, how happy rated customers are, whether your open backlog is growing or shrinking, and how fast the first human reply lands — into one 0-100 gauge. A healthy desk sits in the green; a slipping desk turns amber then red before any single metric looks alarming on its own. Treat it as a smoke alarm, not a diagnosis: when it drops, the sibling cards below tell you which of the four inputs moved.
| What it counts | A weighted 0-100 composite of four Intercom signals: first-response SLA attainment, CSAT (% positive conversation_rating), inverse backlog growth (week-over-week change in open conversations), and median first-response speed. Each input is normalised to 0-100 and blended. |
| Sample type | Derived. Computed by Vortex IQ from the Intercom Conversations API (conversation.statistics, conversation_rating) and the live open-conversation count — not a native Intercom field. |
| Why it matters | It is the founder-level “is support OK?” read. One amber gauge prompts a five-minute triage instead of waiting for a CSAT complaint or an SLA escalation to surface days later. It deliberately leads the Executive Command Centre because it absorbs the noise of the individual cards. |
| Reading the value | Higher is better. 100 is a flawless desk; the alert fires below 70. A drop is rarely the gauge’s fault — open the four inputs (SLA attainment, CSAT, backlog trend, median first-response) to see which one dragged it down. |
| Currency | number |
| Time window | RT/7D |
| Alert trigger | <70 |
| Sentiment key | support_health_score |
| Roles | owner, operations |
Calculation
Vortex IQ pulls the four inputs from your Intercom workspace, normalises each to a 0-100 sub-score, and blends them into the composite:- First-response SLA attainment — share of conversations in the last 7 days whose
conversation.statistics.time_to_admin_replylanded inside your first-response target. - CSAT — percentage of positive
conversation_ratingvalues (4-5 stars) over all rated conversations in the window. - Inverse backlog growth — week-over-week change in the count of open conversations; a shrinking or flat backlog scores well, a growing one drags the index down.
- First-response speed — median
time_to_admin_reply, normalised so faster replies score higher.
Worked example
A representative reading of Support Health Score for Blitz mid-week. Last week the gauge sat at 84 (green). This morning it reads 68 and the alert has fired. Nothing in the inbox looks dramatic, so the support lead opens the four inputs. CSAT is steady at 91% and SLA attainment is fine at 88% — but the open-conversation backlog jumped from 31 to 54 over the weekend and median first-response time stretched from 22 minutes to 3 hours 10 minutes. The story writes itself: a weekend kit-launch drove a volume spike that two on-shift agents could not clear, so replies slowed and the backlog snowballed. The fix is staffing, not coaching. The lead adds a Monday-morning shift and the gauge recovers to 81 by the next refresh. Use Vortex Mind to trace which tag or channel drove the spike; ask Ask Viq “what pushed our support health score below 70 this week?” for the same answer in plain English.Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why merchants reach for it |
|---|---|
ic_open_conversations | The backlog input behind the score — rising open volume is the most common reason the gauge dips. |
ic_median_first_response | The speed input — slow first replies pull the composite down even when CSAT holds. |
ic_csat_score | The satisfaction input — confirms whether a slip is customers feeling it or just operational lag. |
ic_sla_attainment | The SLA input — shows what share of conversations cleared their first-response target. |
ic_backlog_trend | Plots the backlog over 30 days so you can see whether today’s dip is a blip or a trend. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Intercom’s own dashboard: There is no single equivalent in Intercom — this is a Vortex IQ composite. To reconcile its inputs, open Reports → Conversations for SLA attainment, median first-response and resolution times; Reports → Customer satisfaction for CSAT; and the Inbox open-folder count for the live backlog. The gauge moves with those four views together, not any one of them. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Composite, not a native metric. No Intercom report shows this number directly; it is a blend. | n/a | Compare the four inputs individually, not the gauge. |
| Window mix. The score reads SLA/CSAT/speed over a rolling window but the backlog input in near real time; Intercom reports use fixed ranges. | Variable | Match each input’s window in Intercom Reports before assuming a divergence. |
| Office-hours config. SLA and first-response inputs honour your Intercom office hours; if those differ from the Vortex IQ profile, the sub-scores shift. | Variable | Confirm office-hours and SLA settings match. |
| Time zone. Intercom reports in the workspace time zone; Vortex IQ aligns to the merchant reporting time zone. | Marginal | Confirm time zone match. |