Defining an SLA policy

Building a policy: which tickets, which targets, and which clock. The order of policies decides which one applies.

Building a policy: which tickets, which targets, and which clock. The order of policies decides which one applies.

Create a policy

1. Open Admin Center, then Objects and rules > Business rules > Service level agreements.
2. Click Create policy, fill in Policy name and a description, and continue.
3. Set the conditions, and continue.
4. Click Add target, pick a metric, and fill in a time per priority. Fifteen seconds is the shortest target the field accepts.
5. Set Hours of operation, calendar or business hours, per priority.
6. Save the policy, then place it in the right order.

Set targets from what you achieve

Before writing a number, report on your current first reply time. Take something near what you already do most of the time and make that the target.

A policy set to what you wish you did produces constant breaches, and a breach that happens every day stops being a signal.

Business hours, nearly always

For anything customer-facing with a team that is not on around the clock, business hours is the honest clock. Calendar hours means a Friday evening ticket is breaching by Saturday morning while nobody is working.

Do not set every target

You can set first reply, next reply, periodic update, resolution and more. Setting all of them means a ticket that can breach in five ways.

First reply time is the one customers feel. Start with that alone, and add a second only when you can say what it would change.

Order the policies

First match wins. Specific policies go above general ones, which means your premium customer policy sits above the catch-all. Reversed, the catch-all matches everything and the premium one never applies. Zendesk's own phrasing for the same rule is to put the most restrictive at the top and the least restrictive at the bottom.

See also

• The order of SLA policies
• The targets: first reply, next reply, resolution time
• How often do we meet our SLA