SLA Management

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) set clear expectations for response and resolution times. HotCRM's SLA Management ensures your team meets its commitments and takes action before deadlines are missed. Whether you support a handful of enterprise accounts or thousands of customers across multiple tiers, SLA Management gives you the tools to stay accountable.

Features

HotCRM provides everything you need to define, monitor, and enforce SLAs — from policy creation to real-time milestone tracking and automated escalations. Below are the key capabilities available to your support team.

Defining SLA Policies

Create policies that match your support commitments. An SLA policy is a set of rules that defines the maximum time your team has to respond to and resolve a case. Each policy defines target times based on case priority.

• What is an SLA?: A Service Level Agreement is a measurable commitment between your support organization and your customers. It guarantees that issues will be acknowledged and resolved within agreed-upon timeframes.
• Creating a Policy: Navigate to Settings → Service → SLA Policies and click New Policy. Give it a name, select the working hours calendar, and define milestones for each priority level.
• Response & Resolution Targets: Set separate goals for first response and full resolution.
  • Critical: 1-hour response / 4-hour resolution.
  • High: 4-hour response / 24-hour resolution.
  • Medium: 8-hour response / 48-hour resolution.
  • Low: 24-hour response / 72-hour resolution.
• Customer Tier Templates: Assign different policies based on the customer's service tier.
  • Gold: Fastest targets with 24/7 coverage and dedicated escalation paths.
  • Silver: Standard business-hours targets with next-business-day escalation.
  • Bronze: Best-effort targets during business hours only.
• Auto-Assignment: SLA policies are automatically applied when a case is created based on its priority and the customer's tier. You can also manually override the assigned policy on any case.

SLA Milestones

Track progress toward each commitment with milestone timers. Milestones appear on the case detail page as countdown indicators so agents always know how much time remains.

• First Response: Time from case creation until an agent sends the first meaningful reply to the customer.
• Resolution: Total elapsed working time from case creation until the case is marked as resolved.
• Custom Milestones: Define additional checkpoints such as "Engineer Assigned," "Root Cause Identified," or "Fix Deployed."
• Milestone Tracking: Each milestone shows a live countdown on the case record with color-coded status — green (on track), yellow (at risk), and red (breached).
• Breach Warnings: Visual indicators turn yellow when a milestone reaches a configurable warning threshold (e.g., 75% of target time elapsed).
• Escalation Triggers: Automatically escalate or reassign a case when a milestone warning threshold is reached.

Business Hours & Holidays

SLA timers only count working hours so your team isn't penalized for off-hours or holidays.

• Support Schedules: Configure working hours per region or team (e.g., 9 AM–6 PM EST, 8 AM–5 PM GMT). You can create multiple schedules and assign them to different queues.
• Holiday Calendars: Create calendars for each region with public holidays and company closures. Navigate to Settings → Service → Holiday Calendars to manage them.
• Timer Pausing: SLA clocks automatically pause outside of business hours and resume when the next working period begins. If a case is created at 7 PM and business hours end at 6 PM, the timer starts the following morning.
• Regional Assignment: Assign the correct calendar to each support queue or team so timers reflect local schedules.
• Multi-Region Support: For global teams, create separate business-hours schedules per region and let the system apply the right one based on the assigned queue.

Escalation Rules

Prevent breaches with automatic escalation paths that keep the right people informed.

• At-Risk Escalation: When a milestone reaches 75% of its target time, notify the assigned agent and team lead via email and in-app alert.
• Breach Escalation: If a milestone is breached, reassign the case to a senior agent and alert the support manager immediately.
• Multi-Level Paths: Define up to three escalation levels (Agent → Team Lead → Support Director) with configurable time intervals between each level.
• Notification Channels: Send escalation alerts via email, in-app notification, or Slack integration.
• Escalation Actions: Beyond notifications, escalation rules can automatically change case priority, reassign ownership, or add the case to a critical review queue.

SLA Reporting

Measure performance and identify areas for improvement with built-in dashboards.

• Compliance Rate: Percentage of cases resolved within SLA targets over a given period. Filter by team, priority, or customer tier.
• Breach Analysis: Drill down into breached cases by priority, team, or customer tier to find recurring patterns and root causes.
• Response Time Trends: Track average first-response and resolution times week over week to spot improvements or regressions.
• Team Performance: Compare SLA attainment across agents and queues to balance workloads and identify coaching opportunities.
• Scheduled Reports: Set up automated weekly or monthly SLA reports delivered to stakeholders via email.

Best Practices

Following these guidelines will help you get the most out of SLA Management and continuously improve your support operations.

1. Start Simple: Begin with three or four priority levels and refine targets after collecting at least one month of baseline data. Over-engineering policies from day one leads to confusion.
2. Align with Contracts: Ensure SLA policies match the commitments in your customer agreements to avoid gaps between what you promise and what the system enforces.
3. Review Monthly: Analyze breach reports each month and adjust targets or staffing as needed. Consistent breaches on a specific priority level may indicate that the target is unrealistic or that the team needs additional resources.
4. Use Warnings, Not Just Breaches: Configure at-risk alerts early enough — ideally at 50% and 75% of the target — so agents have time to act before a breach occurs.
5. Keep Calendars Current: Update holiday calendars at the start of each year so timers remain accurate. Assign a calendar owner in each region to ensure nothing is missed.