You can now set SLA targets for the first response and every response in Freshchat. This way, you can ensure that your team responds within that specified time so that customers are not left hanging.


Let’s say you are an eCommerce company receiving multiple inquiries on orders, products, delivery times, and more daily. You can set a response SLA for each category to help agents prioritize conversations. For example, you can prioritize high-value customers by setting the first response SLA as 60 seconds, categorize product-related inquiries based on conditions, and have a higher first response SLA.   


You can also set up different response SLAs for multiple scenarios - a general SLA for all conversations, specific SLAs for channels or groups (like Support, Sales, etc.), and more. Let us look at an example to understand how to implement this. 


How to set up Response SLA

  • Login as an Admin. Go to Admin > Configuration and Workflows > Conversation SLA Policies

  • Click ‘Add policy’

  • Provide a name and description for the policy - say, WhatsApp Support - Plan A

  • You can set up Response SLAs based on your needs. Let us look at an example: 

  • when ‘custom user property’ ‘Plan type’ ‘is Plan A’ and

  • when ‘Group name’ ‘is Billing’ and 

  • when ‘Topic’ ‘is WhatsApp support’

  • Set the SLA target response time as:

    • First response - 60 secs

    • Every response - 1 min 45secs

  • Set the operational hours as ‘Business Hours’ or Calendar Hours



  • You will also see a 'due by' time in your Team Inbox when you enable this feature.


What happens when an SLA is breached?

When a conversation breaches the given SLA, you can set up automation to ensure that customers are attended to immediately. Here’s how you can do it:

  • Go to Apps > Advanced Automations

  • Click ‘Create new automation’

  • Give it a name, say SLA breached

  • Set the Trigger condition as ‘When First Response SLA is breached’ and click Next

  • Set the condition as ‘SLA name is’ ‘WhatsApp Support - Plan A’ and click Save

  • Set the action as ‘Send a message’ and enter the message

  • Click Save


This automation will now be executed for all conversations where the first response SLA is breached. This way, you can ensure that your agents can get back to the customers as soon as possible and that the customer experience is not compromised. 


Note: Advanced automation is only available on Pro and Enterprise.


Agent experience:

As a support agent, you will handle multiple chats at a time. To keep track of which chats you need to prioritize and understand which chats have breached the SLA, you can:

  • View all chats that are assigned to you

  • Filter by the following options:

    • First Response due

    • Next response due

    • No response due

  • Sort by the following options:

    • Newest conversation - Sorted by the latest message timestamp in descending order

    • Oldest conversation - Sorted by the conversation start time in ascending order

    • Longest wait time - This is the Priority Inbox, sorted by wait time since the last user message

    • Due by  time - time remaining for the SLA breach to occur


Filter options in Team Inbox
Sort options in Team Inbox


  • Now, when a customer who belongs to the above scenario starts a chat, you can see an ‘Overdue’ tag next to the chat whose SLA was breached

  • You can now filter and prioritize your conversations based on these tags



Dashboard views:

As a support admin, you can get an overview of all conversations within SLA and those that have breached SLA. Here’s what will be available on the dashboard:

  • On the dashboard, click SLA metrics

  • Get an overview of:

    • Total number of conversations for which SLA is set

    • Percentage of conversations that are within SLA

    • Total number of SLA-breached conversations

    • Percentage of breached conversations



SLA Reporting:

 A curated report is available for SLA policies:

  • Go to Analytics, click ‘SLA Analytics’

  • These are the metrics available:

    • Conversations with SLA

    • Total number of breached conversations

    • Overall SLA compliance (%)

    • First response SLA compliance (%)

    • Every response SLA compliance (%)

  • You can view comparison graphs for all SLAs that you’ve set for specific dates

  • You can also view graphs for conversations breached by Groups (Email, Billing, etc) and Topics (Support, Phone, etc.)