Service Level Agreement (usually referred to simply as “SLA”) is a metric used to define the level of service between a provider and a client. In the context of a contact center, it’s the time in which you commit to responding to client requests based on when they’re received. For example, you might commit to answering a percentage of chats (e.g., 80% within ) within a certain number of minutes (e.g., two minutes).
Another way to think of SLA is as a due date. The time it takes from when a request is received to when it’s responded to is the SLA for that request. In Gladly, SLA is tracked based on the Channel (e.g., SMS) a request is received. The SLA timer begins and tracks how long a request was received until it’s responded to.
SLA is configured in one of two ways:
- Entry Point SLA
- Inbox SLA (default)
See the Difference between Channel Entry Point SLAs and Inbox SLAs to understand better why you may want to set SLA on the Entry Point instead of by Inbox.
SLA Benchmarks #
There are many benchmarks around SLA in the service industry, but how you set your metrics should be unique to your business. One way you can gauge if the existing SLAs for your Channels are right is based on how your Customers respond to the service you provide. For example, if it historically takes your team an average of 20 minutes, an SLA of five minutes may not be immediately realistic. SLA is a goal, something to aspire to achieve and hopefully maintain as a measure of commitment to Customers.
Let’s use SMS as an example. Suppose your team typically responds to SMSes in under five hours. If you want to improve your SMS SLA metric, you may change the SLA to four hours and see how your team performs against it. Still, it’s not about simply changing your SLA targets. It includes working with your team to discover opportunities to create a more efficient process or find training opportunities to support your SLA goals.
Default Channel SLA #
The following are the default SLA targets configured in Gladly.
- Voicemail – 10 minutes
- Chat – 5 minutes
- SMS – 10 minutes
- Email – 24 hours
- Voice – 1 minute
You have complete control of your SLA metrics and goals based on your business outcome goals. Remember that you can set SLA on the Entry Point or Inbox, but Inbox SLA is required.
SLA reports #
We suggest using the Contact Export report to compare and review your SLA metrics and how well you meet your SLA targets. You can also use the Summary Liveboard to see how you meet SLA goals on each Channel.