Functionality to pause an SLA
PlannedHi team,
Imagine that I have an SLA policy that requires first reply in 30 minutes and updates every 1 hour following that.
Very often, customers will write in with an urgent issue and request a screen sharing session right away. Our first reply is either to get quick initial info, or to simply send them our screen sharing link and ask them to get on the call with us.
These initial responses will satisfy our first reply SLA, but we run into problems when dealing with the 1 hour updates as we might be on the phone call with the customer for over an hour. This means that we are actively engaged with this customer providing them support, but zendesk is only tracking ticket updates, which an agent is not expected to submit while they are talking on the phone to the person who filed the ticket.
I understand that "Pausible update" is available, but this only allows me to pause an SLA when the ticket is pending. We use the Pending state as "we are waiting for the customer to respond", and being on a phone call with them working through an active troubleshooting session is not appropriate for the Pending state.
What I need is a way to pause an SLA while we are on the call that is not: setting it to Pending while on the phone, having it removed from our Open investigation queue, then setting back to Open and replying, then setting back to Pending, and so on.
Most of our SLA breaches are incorrect and are due to this type of reporting failure, and should not be considered real breaches.
I tried to work around this with a checkbox ticket field titled "Currently on a call" that an agent would check when they are on the phone with a customer and would apply an "on_a_call" tag to the ticket and our SLA policies exclude tickets that contain that tag, however this does not actually pause the SLA timer, it just deactivates the SLA and then reapplies the SLA from the previous reply time.
This means that if you are on a call with the checkbox checked for an hour and a half, then end the call and uncheck the box, the SLA will be reapplied and instantly breach as you are 30 mins past the last reply time.
Simply adding "on-hold" to be included in the pausible updates would be a solution, or something more involved where there is an actual option in a ticket to deliberately pause an SLA.
Thank you for your consideration.
Andrew Goetz
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@Zendesk
Any plan to enhance SLA "ON-HOLD" to Stop Next Reply Time?
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+1 vote for me too.
I believe this to be a major flaw in the way the pending status works with SLAs. I also have scenarios where we are waiting on further information on from a customer, but the last communication is from the customer. When they reply back with something like "Sure, I'll get that to you when I can", we should be able to put the ticket into Pending status and have the SLA clock paused. If we respond to the customer just to say "Thanks" then our first call resolution rate drops. There is currently no standard way of getting around this.
As suggested previously, I'd suggest an update to allow the following:
An option for the "Paused" status to stop all SLA clocks.
An option for the "On-Hold" status to stop all SLA clocks.As there is no built-in metric in insights for "next reply time" (which I think is also a standard metric to have left out), we've had to implement custom metrics as a substitute. While the information below may be handy for some, it may not suit all workflows and shouldn't be required to setup due to a limitation in the system.
Reporting on next and subsequent reply times
Time Tracking recipe: The metrics you need to be measuring
Insights recipe: Duration between two or more ticket events in minutes -
+1 for this feature as well.
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+1 for me too, we use on hold a lot as we need confirmation from the third party and its something we cannot control. So would be really great if we can have the SLAs stop counting during on-hold status.
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+1 Here too.
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I dont use Zendesk but am researching tools at present. Call me a noob but.
The incident stays open and active (other than awaiting the client)- If it becomes apparent that the FIX requires a software fix, Then the clock should continue until a "workaround" is applied and at that point the incident is resolved but a secondary ticket could be created to manage the delivery of the software update in line with the businesses software development release policies. (which will/should also have an SLA).
doesn't this get around all this? Or am I being daft?
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We would benefit from the option of pausing an SLA while a ticket is in the hold status. +1 from me.
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I wouldn't even restrict it to the on-hold status. Just having an option to manually pause an SLA would be great.
1st use-case:
A customer writes us, we call him back to answer him. After the call, we set the ticket to "pending" because there are still open topics for him to answer. We don't actually send a reply though, so the "next/first reply time" SLAs keep running.2nd use-case:
We send the customer an email "sorry we're keeping you waiting, we're on it ....". He just replies "ok". Because of his answer, the "next reply time" SLA starts again. -
I would also like to mention that the ability to pause in On Hold status is something that is playing with SLAs, and would be most welcome to the system.
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just like everyone else here (and everyone else that hasn't yet figure out this is a problem), my org needs this too.
Please build this ZD
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I've spent too many hours tinkering with Zendesk and the SLAs and forums. I won't even make a support ticket for this given my past success. The one addition to this post i'll make is that when we send a ticket to engineering or other internal teams or we're just waiting on something to occur i've made a field to put the jira link into conveniently called "Jira Link". This field is a text box and you can use it in triggers or logic to search for null values etc. Recently i've created a Jira Link Destination that lets me check the "location" of the ticket. These fields can also be used for reporting and following tickets which makes the support more efficient.
When we get a ticket and it goes to another team, I link it in the Jira Link and set a Jira Link Destination and put it on hold in one step. The SLA only fires in the absence of a Jira Link Destination and is unable to check for null in the Jira Link field. When a user replies and asks for an update, the Jira Link and Jira Link Destination don't change at all so the SLA doesn't get impeded. I do not remove them via trigger per TIm's suggestions.
This seems to be the only way to get the SLA to work following Tim's guidance. The criteria for agent work time is really what I want to use (new and open status) but it fired SLAs when the amount of work done on a ticket exceeded that time.
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Just wanted to add my 5 cents:
It's really frustrating when Pausable update time doesn't really pauses after setting status to On-hold (this status really means "waiting for a 3rd party", so the timer shouldn't run). Please, ZD, make the Pausable Update time pause in th On-hold state the same way it is paused in Pending state. You can make it optional of course to not break existing workflows. -
We often put a ticket on-hold when it has been agreed between the customer and ourselves (usually at their request) that there will be a period of no focus on the support request until an agreed, future date.
In this scenario, for the SLA pausable update to consider it a breach when there is no public comment update from an agent between the required timeframe is somewhat ridiculous.
On hold by the very nature of the term implies that there is no work expected on the request, so I agree with the others that on-hold should be excluded, or at the very least configurable whether to include or not, so that for those companies can enjoy accurate SLA reporting.
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Hi Everyone,
Thanks for all your comments and input. I'm a new Product Manager here at Zendesk, and one of our priorities for the year is to improve our SLA functionality. Thanks for your patience, and continued feedback! We truly appreciate it.
[Note from the Community team – see Scott's most recent comment for some additional details on what his team is working on in regards to SLAs!]
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Cheers for the update Scott. Would be great to get some movement on this one.
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Hello, any traction on this update to the SLA functionality?
It has been 3 years since we got the response that this was not a priority.Similar situation as the comments above where on-hold is used when tickets are with development or with a vendor and do not need frequent updates to the client.
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Jennire Araque I wanted to provide a quick update since you probably had seen my earlier comment. It's a big priority of ours to update our SLA related capabilities, and the good news is we now have a team working on just that. Improvements like this one is on our roadmap for the next 9 months.
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This was initially flagged in 2017. It is now the end of 2021. You say improvements like this one are on your roadmap "for the next 9 months".
Why are Zendesk so slow at listening to their customers?
Maybe you need to remove the Zen from Zendesk?
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AKQA - United Kingdom I appreciate you taking the time to share your concerns and understand your frustration. With so many requests and possibilities for SLA improvements, we have to make decisions on what we can prioritize with the resources we have available. That being said, we now have a Product Manager (that's me!) and an engineering team dedicated to working on a number of SLA enhancements.
I'm excited to share that some of those enhancements include the following:
SLA full resolution time and impending breach color change
SLA based on internal notes
SLA Alerting in MinutesI hope this gives you a better understanding of what my team is focusing on and please do continue to share feedback with us!
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Hello,
when will it be possible to pause SLA? Each workflow is different from one company to another, and this absence is very constraining.
In the meantime, why not create a new SLA policy including only the Open status?
Thanks in advance for your feedback -
Hello I´m joining this thread as we are having the same issue (as described in the original topic).
I believe you would be able to add a checkbox with few items to each SLA setting.
They could include items as "Pause when on-hold" , "Pause when pending" , "Pause when reply is received from end-user" etc.
Everyone could then setup what they need.
Zendesk is a tool for professionals, and should have much more editing options for us admins.
Thank you for hearing me out. -
Hi Scott Allison, What is the status of these SLA?
Thank you in advance for your feedback!
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Beyond excited and surprised to be finding myself on this page the day after a major product announcement on the topic from Zendesk! Thank you!
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Wow, what an unacceptable answer... pay yourself (Cloudset) rather than we pay and build a clearly desired function. Make it the customers problem.
Zendesk could also make multiple business hours available to more of your customers, not just enterprise, so that SLAs aren't hamstrung by having global teams with different operating hours. Schedules and SLA are symbiotic and not having multiple business hours removes much of the value of SLA. I don't need to pause if the clock can accurately stop when teams aren't working.
Disappointing to see Zendesk's stance on this issue.
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