SLA (Service Level Agreement)
SLA (Service Level Agreement) — service level agreement, used to control the response of employees to messages from clients. For example, questions about payment should be answered within 10 minutes, and less significant — within 1 hour. So, each request is assigned a priority, depending on which the response speed is set.
There are two types of SLA policies in Usedesk:
- General policy. They are used by default. Works for all requests, agents, situations unless otherwise configured by the triggers;
- Private policy. Configurable by triggers.
By default, the «SLA Settings» subsection is in the general list of Usedesk sections. If you have previously disabled this subsection, go to the «Extensions» section and click «ON» for the SLA.
Go to «Settings» → «SLA Settings» and Usedesk will show you a list of SLA policies divided into three blocks:
- The default policy is general policy;
- Active level — private policy. Access for use in the policy setting is enabled;
- Inactive level — private policy. Access to use in the policy setting is disabled.
1. Click the «Create» button to add a new SLA policy or pencil icon to edit existing ones.
2. Specify a policy name and configure the general settings:
- Enabled. Enable access to the policy for use. The default policy does not have this setting;
- Consider the working time settings. Check the box to have the SLA taken into the company and groups of agents' working time (and considered breaks as non-working time). If a ticket is assigned to a group of agents with their own working time settings, the SLA will be guided by it. If there are no such settings, set the company's working hours;
- Consider private comments. If you are in more contact with internal employees or counterparts who share a common Usedesk with you, and your target action is to respond to an internal comment rather than an external client, check this option. Thus, the SLA will be considered when a new comment appears in the ticket;
- Considering the change of an assignee. Click the checkbox to ensure that the SLA countdown starts not when a new message/comment is received, but when the request assignor is changed.
3. Write in the table how long users should process requests with each priority. Fill in three parameters:
- First reply time — the time in minutes between the first client message and the first user response. For tickets created by the user, the first response time is not measured. If there is an auto-reply after a first client message, and then a client
writes a second message, the time of the first reply will be counted from the
time passed from the second client message to the first agent message;
- Next reply time — the time interval between the last unanswered client's message and the next user's reply shown in minutes;
- Resolution time — the time interval from creating a new ticket or opening a solved/closed ticket until it reaches the «Solved»/«Closed» status. The SLA is paused when a ticket reaches the «Pending» status.
After making changes, click «Save».
Extra:
- Write down individual triggers for the configured SLA policy that will be applied automatically;
- Configure email notifications to respond in time to tickets that are approaching the day of delay. To do this: Configure company business hours according to instructions and add a trigger in «Automation» → «Triggers» section, which will send a message to your mail if there is not much time left till the overdue SLA;
- See the illustrative report.