Service-Level Agreements (SLA) in Helpdesk

The Service-Level Agreement (or SLA) is a market standard in customer service tools. It is an agreement between a service provider and their client; it defines the level of services offered, the metrics used to measure these services, and possible solutions (and penalties) in case the agreement is breached.

When it comes to customer support, the SLA can define the standards of support provided, such as quality, availability, and estimated response or solution times.

In Tidio specifically, SLA policies can be set up to determine the amount of time operators have to respond to incoming tickets (emails managed via the Helpdesk).

In this article, you will learn:

• The purpose of SLA policies in Tidio's Helpdesk
• How to configure your project's SLA
• What using SLA looks like in practice

The purpose of SLA policies in Tidio's Helpdesk

A project's SLA allows you to set timeframes for your operators' response times for tickets. The SLA is not communicated to the end-users (customers) in any way; it's a strictly internal policy for your support team.

Using SLA policies in Tidio lets you set a standard and become more efficient with your services, as operators will become more conscious of their own response times. In turn, it can help team leaders track their operators' efficiency with incoming email traffic. Naturally, SLA policies can also be edited (or removed) if your processes change.

If your Tidio project is integrated with several external mailboxes, you can set different policies for each mailbox. On top of that, you can add different policies for tickets that are submitted by website visitors directly via your chat widget, and even for tickets that operators create themselves (from incoming chats, or from scratch) within the Tidio panel.

Each SLA policy lets you determine a separate response time for the first reply and for all subsequent replies.

Configuring your project's SLA

You can set up the SLA policies in the Settings > Service Level Agreements section in your Tidio panel:

In there, you will see your SLA policies (if you've already added any). The available information for each policy includes the policy name, which tickets the policy applies to, the response time for first and subsequent replies, as well as the hours of operation. Please note that all SLA policies are based on calendar hours, not taking into account your team's online/offline schedule!

To add a new policy, click the Add policy button in the top-right:

A new window will pop up, letting you determine the policy's details: its name, sources (integrated mailboxes, tickets submitted via widget, tickets created from inside your Tidio panel), and response times for the first reply and subsequent replies (in hours):

In the Apply to sources field, choose the source (or sources) from the list. You will see any mailboxes you've integrated with your Helpdesk, and two additional options for tickets either submitted by visitors on your website or created by operators in the panel (this applies both to tickets created from existing chats and to tickets created from scratch):

If you already have an SLA policy that uses a certain source, that source will no longer be available to select. If available, however, you can select more than one source - and they will all be listed in the same field once you're done:

The last step is deciding about the response times - the first reply and the next reply. You need to put in the amount of time (in hours) that will become part of the new policy:

Once the new policy is added, you will see it in the general SLA section, along with all the relevant information. If a given policy uses more than one source, you may not see them all immediately (due to size constraints), but it will become visible once you hover your mouse cursor over the sources:

You can edit (or delete) any listed SLA policy by clicking on the options menu on the right:

Using SLA policies in Helpdesk

Once you add an SLA policy, it will become active right away and will start affecting any new tickets that the policy applies to. For all such tickets, you will see an SLA tag in your folder; the marker indicates how much time is left to respond, or whether the SLA is breached or paused:

• A green tag indicates that the SLA is active and there is still a specified amount of time left to respond;
• A red tag indicates that the SLA has been breached, and shows the amount of time that has passed since the breach;
• A grey tag indicates that the SLA is currently paused (this means it's a new ticket created by an operator directly, or the operator replied to an incoming ticket and is awaiting the customer's response).

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Please note: when an operator creates ticket from the Tidio panel (either from scratch or from an existing live chat), that ticket will start out as paused. The SLA will activate once a response from the customer is received.