SLA/OLA Enforcement

What are SLAs and OLAs?

SLA stands for Service Level Agreement: They are the agreed-upon response and resolution times that your support team deliver to your customers.

OLA stands for Operational Level Agreement: They are the time it takes each internal support group to perform their designated tasks in order to prevent an overarching SLA from being breached.

The Problem

While Zendesk has some built-in SLA functionality, it’s not possible to action tickets in the lead up to when an SLA is about to be breached for short periods. This can lead to costly breaches taking place. There are also limitations around the type of SLAs you can create, for example, measuring and reporting on how long it takes internal teams to perform their designated tasks concerning a ticket.

Other areas that native Zendesk SLA functionality is missing is around things such as:

• Down to the minute actions on tickets (Zendesk automations only allow for hourly updates)
• The ability to run SLAs on multiple sets of business hours.
• The ability to run SLAs on private tickets.
• Running SLAs on agent-created tickets.
• Different SLA levels depending on the team a ticket is assigned to.
• Internal SLAs (aka OLAs) to measure and enforce internal team performance.

How we help…

With SweetHawk you’ll be able to configure workflows in Zendesk with down-to-the-minute precision on unlimited sets of business hours.

SweetHawk’s Zendesk Timers app allows you to create an unlimited set of SLA and OLA targets and provides visual timelines for agents to see exactly where SLAs/OLAs are up to so it’s clear when things are on track or if targets have been breached.

Custom ticket actions based on timer events mean that you can build workflows to enforce and ensure that the right outcomes are achieved. Those actions might entail escalating the priority of the ticket, sending an email, or popping up notifications inside of Zendesk using our Notify app. The possibilities are endless and it’s really up to you as to what automated actions you take to ensure desired outcomes are achieved.

Our app’s deep integration with the ticket allows you to leverage the full power of Zendesk triggers, automations, and views. For any tickets that have SLAs and OLAs applied, you’ll also be able to record and report just about any information in relation to those targets over in Zendesk Explore. For example,

• How long does it actually take for the desired actions to be performed on those tickets?
• What percentage of SLA/OLA targets are being breached?
• Which teams are the least likely to meet their SLA/OLA objectives?

…these and many more questions can be answered!

This ability to draw out any pertinent data allows you to identify areas of concern in the business and ultimately provides a path forward to achieve better service to your customers.

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