Mean time to repair (MTTR)

Mean time to repair (MTTR) measures the average duration from problem identification to resolution. In service business contexts, MTTR is typically calculated as the elapsed time from customer's initial service request to job completion.

MTTR matters because it captures the customer's actual experience of getting a problem solved — not just the time you spent on the job, but the total elapsed time including scheduling delay. A 60-minute job that took 5 days to complete (due to scheduling backlog) has a 5-day MTTR even though the technician's work took an hour.

For service operators, MTTR is a critical operational metric. Lower MTTR correlates strongly with: customer satisfaction, customer retention, willingness to pay premium prices, online review quality. MTTR is driven by: scheduling backlog (busy operations have longer MTTR), parts availability (unavailable parts extend MTTR), tech availability for emergency response, and dispatching efficiency. Operators tracking MTTR by service type and customer category identify where operational improvements pay back most directly. Emergency-service MTTR (under 4 hours) is fundamentally different from routine-maintenance MTTR (under 14 days); both deserve separate tracking and improvement targets.