How big should be your customer support backlog?

Let's define what is a backlog first. Backlog is the count of cases that are assigned and unassigned to your reps that are not resolved yet. That is your backlog and can change by the minute due incoming case volume and case closures by your team.

Ideal backlog number formula

Let's get into it. It depends.

However, I will tell you the formula right now.

Your backlog should be about whatever your daily case volume is times five.

If your teams handle 200 cases a day, your backlog should be 1000 cases.

Simple right!

All right, now we got that. Let's look at what a healthy backlog should be?

Healthy backlog should be times 3 of your daily incoming incoming.

If your teams handles 200 cases a day, your healthy backlog should be 600 cases.

Managing your backlog

Every customer support case is unique.

However, when it comes to managing your backlog, you can use various best practices.

I like to think from a customer perspective.

What do customers expect on cases that are not resolved?

They expect case updates.

So you should first of all negotiate when you should update the customer with you guessed it right - with your customer. Customers know it best is a sound advise after all ;)

Maybe your customers need an update next Friday or next month even. So no need to apply a generic formula.

Simply ask "based on your needs, could you please tell me when you would like me to give you a soft update on your case status?"

However, if you want a straight formula and you made it this far in my article. You deserve to know the number.

Every 2 days your cases should have an update to the customer.

In that status update, let customer know your current and next status along with when you plan to give the next update.

What about cases that are escalated to development?

Ah - now we are talking about the black hole ;) Let me let you on a secret. Developers enjoy new product work vs fixing bugs you escalated to them because it is always someone else's code they have to figure out ( btw nobody documents their code)

Now we spoke the truth. We need to have empathy for our developer friends.

In our cases we "toss over the wall" ( that is their perspective), we should put a nice note on those cases before we toss it over.

We should include customer impact. How do we know the customer impact?

You guessed it - you ask the customer because customer is always right ;)

You simply ask the customer "I have a hypothetical question, if we do not fix this bug, how does this impact your business"

You ask and you pause in silence. Listen to their answer. That answer is your customer/business impact.

Once you have that, developers can manage that black hole much better based on urgency vs squeaky wheel.

In Summary

Managing backlog is the backbone of customer support. I provided my formula on what your backlog and healthy backlog is along with actionable tips on how to manage your backlog effectively.

None of this was written with AI - except the image creation but there are great AI tools to manage your backlog and customer conversations. Use the AI to your advantage.

With this first article in 2025, wishing you a wonderful 2025 and happy backlog management.