What Is a Service Level Agreement?
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a commitment your team makes to customers about how quickly you will respond to and resolve their issues. In HelpCanvas, SLA policies define the time targets you want to meet and trigger warnings or escalations when those targets are at risk.
SLAs are important for two reasons. First, they give customers clear expectations, which reduces anxiety and follow-up messages. Second, they give your team a measurable target to work toward, making it easier to identify bottlenecks and staff accordingly.
Components of an SLA Policy
Each SLA policy in HelpCanvas has the following fields:
- Name: A descriptive label for the policy, such as "Standard SLA" or "Enterprise Priority".
- First response time: How long your team has to send the first reply after a ticket is created. Measured in minutes.
- Resolution time: How long your team has to fully resolve the ticket. Also measured in minutes.
- Business hours only: Whether the SLA clock pauses outside your defined business hours. Enable this if your team does not provide 24/7 support.
- Priority: Optionally link this policy to a specific ticket priority (Low, Medium, High, Urgent). When a ticket has that priority, this policy automatically applies.
Typical SLA Configurations
Here are some example configurations used by support teams of various sizes:
Small Team (Business Hours Only)
| Priority | First Response | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent | 30 minutes | 4 hours |
| High | 2 hours | 1 business day |
| Medium | 4 hours | 2 business days |
| Low | 1 business day | 5 business days |
Enterprise (24/7 Coverage)
| Priority | First Response | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 15 minutes | 2 hours |
| High | 1 hour | 8 hours |
| Medium | 4 hours | 24 hours |
| Low | 8 hours | 72 hours |
Setting Up Business Hours
Before configuring SLAs with the "Business hours only" option, make sure your business hours are correctly defined under Settings > Business Hours. You can set different start and end times for each day of the week and mark entire days as closed (useful for weekends and public holidays).
Business hours affect the SLA clock as follows: if a ticket arrives at 4:55 PM on a Friday with a 2-hour first response SLA and your team finishes at 5:00 PM, the SLA clock pauses at 5:00 PM and resumes at your Monday opening time. The agent still has the remaining 1 hour and 55 minutes to respond.
SLA Status Indicators
In the ticket list and ticket detail view, SLA status is displayed as a countdown timer:
- Green timer — The ticket is within its SLA window with comfortable time remaining (more than 25% of time left).
- Amber timer — The SLA deadline is approaching (less than 25% of time remaining). This is a warning to act soon.
- Red timer — The SLA has been breached. The timer shows how long ago the deadline passed.
SLA breaches are also visible in the Reports > SLA section, where you can see breach rates by agent, channel, and time period.
SLA Pausing
The SLA clock automatically pauses when a ticket is set to Pending status and resumes when:
- The customer sends a new reply
- An agent manually changes the status back to Open
This ensures SLA metrics accurately reflect your team's responsiveness, rather than penalizing you for waiting on information from the customer.
Receiving SLA Alerts
Agents and admins can receive notifications before an SLA breach occurs. Configure notification preferences under Settings > Notifications. Available notification channels include in-app alerts, email, and browser push notifications.
You can also use automation rules to take action when an SLA is approaching breach — for example, automatically escalating the ticket priority or notifying a manager.
SLA Reporting
The SLA reports section gives you a breakdown of your team's performance against defined targets:
- First response rate: Percentage of tickets where the first response was sent within the SLA target.
- Resolution rate: Percentage of tickets resolved within the SLA target.
- Breach count: Number of breaches over the selected period.
- Average response time: Mean time from ticket creation to first response.
- Average resolution time: Mean time from ticket creation to resolution.
Filter reports by date range, channel, priority, and agent to identify specific areas for improvement.
Best Practices
A few recommendations from teams that have successfully rolled out SLA policies:
- Start conservative: Set targets you are confident you can meet. Adjust them over time as you measure actual performance. Overpromising and under-delivering is worse than having no SLA at all.
- Communicate targets to customers: Let customers know what to expect, either on your contact page or in your auto-acknowledgment email. This significantly reduces "just checking in" follow-ups.
- Review weekly: Check SLA reports every week for the first month after rolling out policies. Patterns emerge quickly and you can adjust staffing or targets accordingly.
- Align SLAs with contracts: If you have contractual commitments with enterprise customers, make sure your SLA policy reflects those commitments so the system can alert you automatically.