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Recipe — Standard support SLA setup

Complete worked example: a Standard Support SLA covering email and chat, with sane targets, the at-risk escalation automation, and a daily breach-rate review surface. Copy-paste values included.

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Recipe — Standard support SLA setup

A complete worked example. By the end you’ll have a Standard Support policy live across email and web chat, an at-risk escalation automation pinging the leads channel before things breach, and a clear set of numbers to watch in Analytics.

What you’ll end up with

Policy: "Standard Support"
  Channels: Email, Chat, SMS
  Metrics:
    First Reply Time:  SLA=0, At risk=1h,  Urgent=4h,  Breach=24h
    Resolution Time:   SLA=0, At risk=1d,  Urgent=3d,  Breach=5d
  Office hours: respected (default)

Automation: "Escalate at-risk SLAs to support leads"
  Triggers on: An SLA is about to be breached
  Actions: assign to senior agent, ping #support-leads, tag Escalated

Before you start

Step 1 — Create the SLA policy

In Settings → SLA Policies → +:

  • Name — Standard Support
  • Description — Default response and resolution targets for standard-tier conversations.
  • Active — On
  • Ignore office hours — Off (we want pauses outside hours)
  • Assign to Channels — Email, Chat, SMS
  • Assign to Teams — (empty — channel-only fallback)
  • Metrics — First Reply Time, Resolution Time

For First Reply Time, set targets:

  • SLA — 0
  • At risk — 1 hour
  • Urgent — 4 hours
  • Breach — 24 hours

For Resolution Time:

  • SLA — 0
  • At risk — 1 day
  • Urgent — 3 days
  • Breach — 5 days

Save.

Step 2 — Verify on a live conversation

Open a recent inbound email or chat. The conversation header should show an SLA badge with a remaining-time countdown.

If badges don’t appear, check that the conversation’s channel is in the policy’s Assign to Channels list.

Step 3 — Add the at-risk escalation automation

Build a new Automation:

  • 1 — Trigger — An SLA is about to be breached
  • 2 — Condition — (none — every at-risk SLA escalates)
  • 3 — Branch — Always
  • 4 — Action 1 — Assign Conversation to Agent/Team → Team: Senior Support
  • 5 — Action 2 — Send Slack Message or DM → channel #support-leads, body: :rotating_light: SLA at risk on {{conversation.id}} ({{contact.name}}). Conversation: {{conversation.url}}
  • 6 — Action 3 — Add tag → Escalated
  • 7 — Schedule restriction — Inside opening hours
  • 8 — Throttle — Per conversation, 1 per 30 minutes

Save and enable. See the SLA escalation recipe for variants and the rationale behind the action ordering.

Step 4 — Watch the numbers

Open Analytics → Fast enough?. Filter SLA policy to Standard Support. Look at:

  • Breach rate over the last 7 days
  • Median First Reply time vs. the At risk threshold (1h)
  • Distribution across SLA / At risk / Urgent / Breach bands

For the first 2–3 weeks after going live, expect numbers to wobble as the team adjusts. Don’t tighten targets in the first month.

Targets to retune after a few weeks

  • Breach rate >25% on First Reply — Either staff up, or relax First Reply Breach to 36h or 48h
  • Breach rate <2% across the board — Targets too loose — cut At risk in half across both metrics
  • At-risk fires constantly but breaches are rare — Bring At risk closer to Breach — the warning is firing too early
  • Breaches on Resolution but not First Reply — Either Resolution target is unrealistic, or the team is acknowledging without progressing — separate conversation, not a target tweak

Variants

  • Add a Premium policy scoped to a Premium team. Same metric structure, tighter numbers (First Reply Breach at 4h, Resolution at 1d). See Tie an SLA to a customer tier.
  • Add a 24/7 critical-issue policy with Ignore office hours on, scoped to a dedicated on-call team.
  • Form Builder conversations — form conversations arrive as email and get Standard Support. To give them their own targets, add a policy with Form under Assign to Channels. It is used instead of Email for them. See The Form choice.
  • Channel-specific tightening — chat needs faster First Reply than email. Add a separate policy Chat Standard scoped to Chat with First Reply Breach at 30 minutes.

Troubleshooting

  • Symptom: Some conversations don’t trigger the escalation automation. Fix: Check the rule’s schedule restriction — Inside opening hours means after-hours at-risk events don’t fire. If you want 24/7 escalation, drop the restriction (and reconsider whether someone’s actually monitoring #support-leads overnight).
  • Symptom: First Reply badge says Met even though no agent has replied yet. Fix: A reopened conversation where the original First Reply was already met. The metric stays Met across reopens — by design. Use All Messages if you need a fresh reply-time signal on every customer message.

See also

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