Metric types reference
A policy can track up to three different metrics, each with its own timer. Mix and match them per policy depending on what you’re committing to.
First Reply Time
Measures how long until the agent’s first response after the customer’s initial message.
- Starts — When the conversation is created (first inbound customer message arrives)
- Stops — When the first outbound agent message is sent
- Restarts on reopen? — No — if an agent has already replied, this metric is permanently
Met - Best for — Channels where first impressions matter — email, chat, contact form
This is the most-tracked SLA metric in customer support. Customers judge the quality of support partly by how fast someone acknowledges their problem, separate from how fast it gets resolved.
All Messages
Measures how long until an agent responds to any inbound customer message — not just the first one.
- Starts — Each time a new customer message arrives without a pending agent reply
- Stops — When an agent sends an outbound message
- Restarts on reopen? — Yes — fresh countdown after each reopen
- Best for — Long-running conversations where ongoing responsiveness matters; high-stakes accounts
This is harder to satisfy than First Reply because it fires repeatedly through a conversation. A conversation with three customer follow-ups has three All Messages timers running back-to-back.
Resolution Time
Measures total time from conversation creation to resolution.
- Starts — When the conversation is created
- Stops — When the conversation is marked
done - Restarts on reopen? — Yes — fresh countdown if the conversation comes back into Active
- Best for — Cases where the outcome matters more than the response cadence — bugs, billing disputes, complex troubleshooting
Resolution targets are typically much longer than reply targets — hours or days versus minutes. A 4-hour First Reply with a 24-hour Resolution is a common shape.
Combining them in a single policy
Each metric in a policy runs independently. You can configure all three on the same policy, with different priority targets per metric:
- First Reply Time — 8h — 4h — 2h — 30m
- All Messages — 24h — 8h — 4h — 1h
- Resolution Time — 5d — 3d — 1d — 4h
The conversation gets four badges (one per metric), each in its own state. The conversation list shows the worst state across the three.
Picking which metrics to track
- Standard support team, mixed channels — First Reply + Resolution
- High-volume chat where speed is everything — First Reply only (Resolution is hard to bound on chat)
- Premium support with promised SLAs in contracts — First Reply + All Messages + Resolution (track everything)
- Internal IT helpdesk with self-set targets — Resolution only (response time is informal)
- Voice support — First Reply maps poorly to live calls — use Resolution only, or rely on call-handling metrics outside SLA
Don’t track what you can’t influence
Resolution Time on tickets that depend on third-party providers (carriers, banks, manufacturers) is nominally trackable but politically dangerous — agents are held to a target they can’t actually hit. Either exclude those conversations from the SLA via channel/team scoping, or use a much longer Resolution target and rely on Resolution + a manual “external dependency” tag instead.