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How to “Pause” the Next Response SLA Target on Tickets



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Chandra Robrock

Most Helpful - 2021Community Moderator

Posted Oct 07, 2020

The Problem 

We found ourselves breaching on SLA tickets in which we wouldn’t consider to be a true breach. For example, let’s consider the following scenario:

  1. Customer writes into Support
  2. Support confirms it’s a bug & escalates it to engineering
  3. Support lets the customer know we’ll be back in touch by EOD Friday with an update
  4. Customer responds and simply says “thank you,” triggering the Next Response SLA target

Since the customer didn’t ask any additional questions and we’ve already communicated clear next steps, the customer isn’t actually expecting a response back from us immediately, yet the Next Response SLA Target is.

We could send a public response back to the customer that says something similar to “Of course! We’ll be back in touch shortly.” But what happens when the customer responds back to that email with yet another “Thank you” message? All of a sudden, we feel caught in the middle of a “no, you hang up” scenario.

The Goal 

We wanted a way to be able to move a ticket into a Pending or On-Hold status without having to first send out a public response simply to satisfy the Next Response SLA target.

A Quick Note Before Getting Started

While the solution outlined below has worked great for our team, you might need to rework it to fit your exact Zendesk workflows. 

For instance, we have several automations in place that will reopen tickets after a specified time period. This helps us identify the exact tickets we need to follow up or check in on.

As a result, we don’t use the Pausable or Periodic Update targets for the majority of our SLA policies. If your team heavily relies on the Pausable or Periodic Update targets, you’ll want to take a closer look into exactly how your team is using SLAs as well as the Pending and On-Hold ticket statuses to make sure this approach makes sense for your team.

Instructions 

Step 1

Create a custom checkbox field. If you’re using multiple ticket forms, you’ll also need to add this new ticket field to any relevant ticket forms. 

Step 2

Add a condition to all SLA policies that you’d like to use this functionality on so that the SLA is only applied for tickets in which this checkbox is unchecked.

Step 3

Create a trigger to automatically unselect this checkbox upon the agent’s next public comment on the ticket. This helps ensure that all future Next Response Targets can be triggered without your agent needing to manually uncheck this field.

That's it!

Now, if you want to move the ticket into a different status without sending out a public response, you’ll simply want to select this checkbox when doing so.

As a final step, I’d recommend training your agents on how and when you use this new checkbox. When I initially rolled this out, I provided our team with the specific use cases we’d want to use this for so that the expectations were clearly set from the beginning. 

If you end up implementing this, definitely let me know. Would love to hear how it's been helping your team or if you found any ways to improve upon this solution, especially for your own unique SLA policies and workflows.


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I have tried this however this still creates on difficulty:

If we set something to on-hold and "pause", if an end-user follows-up, the Next Reply is due in 0 minutes and that is not feasible. The SLA still breaches.

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Chandra Robrock

Most Helpful - 2021Community Moderator

Hi Jeremy Mifsud - It sounds like you may have a trigger that is automatically deselecting the Pause SLA checkbox when a new comment is added by an end user. We have something similar in place to help ensure that these tickets don't get stuck at the back of our queue but, when this happens, my team will review the ticket to understand if it's a "true" breach.

If it isn't a true breach (e.g. we paused the SLA since they looped in someone from their team internally who we are now waiting on and, when this other person responded, it was after our Next Reply SLA would've been due), we'll re-select the Pause SLA checkbox before we respond & we'll leave an internal comment stating that we did this.

That way, when we do respond to the customer, it won't count as an SLA achievement or breach. This solution is definitely a workaround, but one that has worked well for my team's workflows in the short-term. 

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Hi Chandra, Oh that's interesting?
So to confirm, if a ticket goes to -5 minutes (for example), and an internal note update is done to remove SLA, then a public reply, will no longer constitute as a breach?

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image avatar

Chandra Robrock

Most Helpful - 2021Community Moderator

Jeremy Mifsud Exactly! The timer will still show as red initially but, as long as a public comment hasn't yet been left to satisfy the Next Reply SLA, the breach won't be set in stone just yet since the SLA metric will still be in an Active status. 

Once a public comment is made, the SLA metric status will move to a Completed status, so the breach (or achievement) will be "locked in" so to speak. So, as long as you re-pause the SLA before a public comment is left, you'll be all set.

You also don't necessarily have to leave an internal note when you uncheck the box, but we do to clarify why we re-paused the SLA. You could definitely opt to just check the custom checkbox you created & click Submit without leaving an internal comment. 

Discovering that was a game changer for us & some of our workflows! 🙌

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This is perfect and actually works for our needs as well. Thank you for this tip!! 

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image avatar

Chandra Robrock

Most Helpful - 2021Community Moderator

Hi Tina - I'm so happy to hear that! This workaround has worked well for us the past few years, so I'm happy to share it with anyone else that may find it useful.

I did notice this comment from Scott (Zendesk Product Manager) the other day, and he shared a Google Form that customers can fill out to share more about the specific use cases they have for wanting to pause an SLA so, if you haven't already, I'd recommend filling out that form as well. I just did it the other day so figured I'd pass it along. 🤞 this is built-in functionality soon!

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