SLA with Cliedesk Pro

Every edition has one set of business hours with holidays, closure mode and an honest reply promise for customers (see the Free guide Business hours, holidays and closures). Cliedesk Pro adds SLA policies: targets for how fast your team replies and resolves, clocks on every conversation, badges, views, rules and the SLA report. Pro also adds more business hours. Where these options are, Free shows a PRO badge.

SLA policies

Open Settings → Automation → SLA policies. People with Manage settings (Cliedesk Admin) can change policies. Every change is written to the audit log.

1. Click Add SLA policy.
2. Enter a Name.
3. Under Which conversations it applies to, add conditions. You can use product, channel, priority, type, queue, team, tags, organization, custom fields and contact conditions, such as the customer’s email domain, the WordPress role of the linked user or, with WooCommerce, a product the customer bought. Without conditions, the policy matches every conversation.
4. Fill in the Targets by priority table. Write 30m, 4h or 1d 2h. Leave a cell empty for no target. A target can be 1 minute to 90 days.
5. Click Save SLA policy.

You can add as many policies as you need. The first policy in the list whose conditions match applies, so only one policy runs on a conversation. Use the up and down arrows to change the order. Archive stops a policy from matching. Turn on Show archived policies to find it and Restore it.

The targets

• First reply: from the start to the first public reply sent by a person. Held, scheduled and failed replies do not count. Automatic acknowledgments do not stop it.
• Next reply: each new customer message after a reply starts a new clock. Your next public reply meets it.
• Resolution: from the start until the conversation is Resolved.
• Periodic update: the longest time between agent updates. Turn on Internal notes count as updates if notes should count.
• Customer wait time: time in New, Open and Waiting on third party.
• Agent work time: time in New and Open.

If someone changes the priority, the due times move at once.

Pauses and business hours

Statuses with Pauses the SLA clock stop every running clock. Set it in Settings → Workspace → Conversations when you add or edit a status; the list shows Pauses SLA. By default these are Waiting on customer, Waiting on third party and Snoozed. The clock keeps the time it used and continues when the status changes. The policy dialog shows a short summary of these rules.

• Resolution time counts the total time, waiting included keeps the resolution clock running while waiting.
• Pause the periodic update while waiting is on by default.
• Count business hours only counts only open hours of the chosen Business hours (or the conversation’s own hours). For example, with Monday to Friday 09:00–18:00, Friday 17:00 plus 2 hours is Monday 10:00. Holidays and closures are skipped. During a closure, calendar clocks pause too.
• At risk when this share of the time is left (%) sets when a clock turns amber (25% by default).

Change a policy

When you edit a policy, Cliedesk shows how many open conversations use or match it. In Apply the changes to, choose Open conversations too (recalculate their due times) or New conversations only. Saving, archiving or reordering checks open conversations again in the background. A change to business hours or holidays does the same.

Reopened conversations

Clocks belong to an episode. When a customer replies to a resolved conversation, a new episode starts with fresh targets. The earlier episode keeps its met or breached result in reports.

SLA in the inbox

The inbox list, the table’s SLA column and the conversation header show a badge: green SLA due in a time, amber when at risk, red SLA overdue a time.

• Sort by Next SLA due. Queues can use the order Next SLA due (the default with Pro).
• Filter by SLA state or Next SLA due (due within a number of hours, overdue, or empty).
• Use the system views At risk and Breached; Needs reply sorts by the next SLA due time.
• Home shows Due today (your conversations with a target due before the end of the day) and the key number SLA at risk.
• The WordPress toolbar counter shows a red dot when one of your conversations has a target at risk or breached.
• With Computed priority on, a target at risk or breached raises the priority.

SLA in rules

Rules can start on An SLA policy applies, An SLA target is at risk, An SLA target is breached, An SLA target is paused and An SLA target resumes. The SLA state and Next SLA due conditions work in rules and views.

• Apply an SLA policy sets a chosen policy, or No SLA. It overrides the automatic match until you clear it.
• Set business hours gives one conversation its own business hours.

Each change shows on the conversation timeline. See Rules in the Free guide.

The reply promise

With an SLA policy, the reply-by time customers see uses the first reply target. Before a conversation exists (the chat widget home), Cliedesk uses the first policy without conditions. Later it is when the running first or next reply clock is due, never before your business hours open. The widget, the portal, the acknowledgment email and the {conversation.reply_by} token all show the same time.

More business hours

In Settings → Business hours, Other business hours lists more schedules. Click Add business hours, then Edit, Holidays, Make default (what everything else uses), Archive and Restore.

A conversation uses the first schedule it finds:

1. The conversation’s own schedule (the rule action Set business hours).
2. The queue’s schedule (Business hours in the queue’s routing settings).
3. The team’s schedule.
4. The channel’s schedule (the Business hours per channel card).
5. The product’s schedule (see Products and brands with Cliedesk Pro).
6. The default schedule.

The In business hours and Holiday conditions can name any schedule.

SLA report

Reports → SLA shows attainment per policy and target: targets met in time ÷ (met in time + breached), for targets that ended in the period. It also shows the hit rate per team, agent, queue, channel, priority, product or topic, and the breached targets with the time over. Download CSV saves the breach list. The overview shows the number SLA attainment.

When Pro is turned off

Policies, clocks and the SLA history stay stored. Without Pro nothing new is measured: no badge, sort, view, rule trigger or report shows SLA, and every conversation follows the default business hours. When Pro runs again, open conversations are checked again: running clocks continue and overdue ones are marked breached.