Recent searches


No recent searches

Defining SLA policies



image avatar

Lisa Kelly

Zendesk Documentation Team

Edited Dec 23, 2024


9

122

122 comments

image avatar

Sabra

Zendesk Customer Care

Hey Beth! I know it's been a while since you posted, but the behavior your agent was seeing does sound odd! I think this would require a deeper look into your account and with that agent, so if they are still experiencing this please reach out to our Support team so we can assist further!

Hello Whitney! There are three possible ways to create a side conversation at this time: email, Slack, and ticket. If you are creating side conversations with the ticket option, you can set up SLAs/OLAs following the example in this article: Defining OLA policies using internal SLAs and child ticket side conversations. Since the other two methods of side conversations create threads that aren't actually tickets, we can't determine which SLA policy the conversation would meet and thus can't capture SLA information. That being said, we are always looking for ways to improve our system, so I would highly recommend posting your feedback and use case to our General Product Feedback topic!

0


Super excited for the "total resolution time." However, is there any way to get the SLA to pause when the ticket is on hold?

1


image avatar

Zsa Trias

Zendesk Customer Care

Hello Holly,

Unfortunately, there's no way to pause the SLA for "Total Resolution Time" metric on any status change. As mentioned in its definition, "It measures the entire lifecycle of a ticket, from when it's created until when it's solved. It doesn't pause on any ticket status changes."

1


Hi,

When we receive a ticket the SLA is 8 business hours, but the system is adding the Periodic Update to SLA and it is increasing the time for agents to give the first reply.

Do you know why it is happening?

Thanks.

Priscila.

 

1


image avatar

Noly Maron Unson

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Priscila,

I've gone ahead and created a ticket on your behalf to investigate your issue further. Please check your email. 

Thank you.

1


Is "periodic updates" a measurable metric? I can't seem to find it anywhere on Explore to add to my reports.

1


image avatar

Bobby Koch

Zendesk Luminary

Sarah Seiwert yes - it is in the SLA dataset though, won't show up in tickets, updates history, knowledge, etc., You will probably want to measure it in % achieved 

1


image avatar

Andrei Kamarouski

Community ModeratorThe Wise One - 2021

Hey, this is the formula for the metric like this.

IF [SLA metric]="Periodic Update Time" 
THEN AVG(SLA metric completion time (days)) 
ENDIF

2


This doesn't seem to be working for me. It's telling me that I have syntax errors. Besides changing days to hrs), what else am I missing. I'm a coding novice, so please be kind to me, community!

0


image avatar

Andrei Kamarouski

Community ModeratorThe Wise One - 2021

Sarah Seiwerts, from the screenshot I see that the attribute and metric are not recognized, Most likely you are trying to add this metric not in the SLA dataset, but in another one. Could you double-check it and create it in the report from the SLAs dataset? 

0


Hi Team,

I am wondering why tickets from our web form and web widget comes in without an SLA and Group. 

All suggestions on how we can fix this is very much appreciated!

Regards,
Maribeth

1


image avatar

Arianne Batiles

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Beth,

I've created a ticket for you so we can further investigate. Please check your inbox for updates. 

0


Is it necessary to have a pausable and periodic update SLA on the same defined policy? They sound so similar and perhaps there's some redundancy there that I can choose one or the other based on what I want to have happen for my tickets? 

0


image avatar

Audrey Ann Cipriano

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Sarah Seiwert

It is not necessary to have both the pausable and periodic update SLA on the same policy, The main difference of those targets is the pausable update gives you the option to pause the SLA when the ticket is set to Pending status. Hope this helps! :) 


0


Hi everyone
We're only using the Next Reply Time to measure how long we're taking to reply to our customers. However, we need a way to stop the SLA whenever a customer replies with something like "Thank you" which does not require any other interaction from our side, or when the customer is having a conversation with a third party before they need our input. Is there a way to pause it? We tried the Hold Status, but the time just keeps on running 

1


image avatar

Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Lucero!

 

Unfortunately by design, all end-user responses would reopen a ticket. You can create a Trigger instead to re-close tickets & utilizing the Trigger condition called “Ticket: Comment text”. For reference you can check out Trigger conditions and actions reference

0


Hello, not sure if it was mentioned before (there is 22 pages of comments and I won't be able to go through each comment. Thank you for your patience!!) but it would be great if SLA's could be based on specific schedules. We have a specific schedule for our Treasury team's wires process since they do not process wires after 2 PM. Their SLA's for Wires, however, go off of the regular business (default) schedule. 

0


image avatar

Amy Dee

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Hannah! 
Schedules are applied to tickets, not SLA policies (or other business rules). For the SLA policy, you just choose between calendar and business hours for each target. If you choose business hours, the SLA will use the schedule associated with the ticket. 

 

Professional accounts only have one schedule, so there isn't much flexibility with business hours. Enterprise accounts can have multiple schedules, though, and they're controlled with business rules. That would allow you to create corresponding schedules and SLA policies for tickets in certain workflows.

We have more information about schedules here: Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays.

I hope this helps!

0


ZD - let's say we have a Next Reply Time SLA of 30 minutes.  End user says “Thank you”, and we solve the ticket without replying with a public comment because it's not necessary to reply to that.  If the ticket is solved, does that pause or cancel or meet the SLA, or is that not considered as meeting the SLA?

0


image avatar

Amy Dee

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi there! 

Solving a ticket also fulfills all active SLA targets. This includes reply and update targets, which typically require a public comment. In your example, solving the ticket would fulfill the next reply time target, even if the agent didn't publicly respond to “Thank you.”

 

I hope this helps!

0


Hi, I am trying to follow the steps described in this article to define SLA, but under “Business rules”, I only see Triggers and Automations, and I dont see Service Level Agreements. Is it because my Zendesk plan doesnt support it? is there other alternative to setup SLA?

0


image avatar

Ivan Miquiabas

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Fajar Cahyadi
 
Most probably, but can you send a screenshot of what you can see under click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Service level agreements? 
 
SLA policy currently supports:
 

0


Hi Ivan Miquiabas ,

Here is the screenshot. I only see Triggers and Automations under Business rules. Is there another way to setup SLA?

0


Does the “next time reply” timer still run if we don't reply to the customers latest correspondance but pend a ticket straight away? 

0


Hi,

 

I’m looking to establish SLA policies tailored to distinct support groups. Our first-line and third-line support teams require varying reply and resolution times. Currently, I can only assign policies based on the ‘Priority’ ticket field, with ‘High’ or ‘Normal’ as the options.

 

I'm having difficulty integrating custom fields into the SLA policy. We have custom fields named P1 through P4, yet they don’t seem to be applicable within an SLA policy framework. Is there a way to make this work?

 

I aim to devise an SLA policy that caters to a particular brand and accommodates different support team groups, utilising our P1 to P4 ticket values as performance indicators.

0


 

Hi,

 

I am currently configuring separate SLA policies on Zendesk for our first and third line support. I would like to clarify that our first-line agents will exclusively handle normal priority tickets. Since their responsibility is limited to normal priority tickets, any high-priority cases must be escalated to the third line. As a best practice, I propose leaving the reply and resolution metrics 0 under the high-priority column for our first-line agents.

 

Is it best practice to set up an SLA policy for 1st line support for high priority as zero for reply and resolution metrics?

 

Please advise.

 

I would appreciate speaking directly with a Zendesk agent to discuss this matter further. This way, I can provide more input on our SLA policy.

 

Thank you for your attention.

0


Hi,

How do I get in contact with Zendesk support directly? The get help button does not work on my account. It doesn't load when selecting “Get Help” in the admin area. Please advise.

0


I would like to activate the SLA policy for third line support high-priority first-time replies. For example, when the first line receives an incident that is later escalated to high priority (P1) after further investigation, I want to ensure that the high-priority first-time reply works correctly when assigning the ticket to third-line support.

 

However, currently, it does not function as expected. Instead, it activates the high-priority resolution time.

 

Please provide your advice on this matter.

0


Hey Mickey,

I've generated a support ticket on your behalf. Please check your email for related notifications.

0


If we are on Support Essential and do not have the ability to set up SLA does this mean our reporting is based on being available 24/7 and does not take into account weekends and out of hours?

 

0


Please sign in to leave a comment.