Unassigned Ticket Rate
Also known as: Unowned Tickets, Untriaged Backlog
Unassigned Ticket Rate is the share of unsolved tickets that currently have no assignee. In Zendesk Explore it comes from the Unassigned unsolved tickets metric, which counts tickets with a null assignee that are not solved or closed, divided by total unsolved tickets.
Why Unassigned Ticket Rate Matters
An unassigned ticket appears in no agent’s personal queue, so it generates no accountability signal until an SLA target fires or the customer chases. Unlike backlog, which includes work actively in progress, this metric isolates work nobody has picked up — making it one of the few leading indicators of capacity strain, since median pickup time rises before first reply time does.
Read it alongside ticket age. A high rate made up entirely of tickets created in the last hour is a healthy queue mid-triage; the same rate made up of week-old tickets means work is being repeatedly skipped rather than waiting.
How to Calculate
Unassigned unsolved tickets / Total unsolved tickets × 100
In TicketBoard
TicketBoard helps you track unassigned ticket rate and related metrics from your Zendesk data. Connect your account for instant visibility.