Topic escalation based on SLA?

Mathew Weaver

7 years ago
updated 7 years ago
Under review

Some other customer support management systems have built in functionality for SLAs (service level agreement). For example, suppose that you have a standard support level and a premium support level. For standard support, you are expected to reply to the client within 12 business hours. For premium support, you are expected to reply to the client within 4 business hours. The system should include at least the following features:

automatic escalation (e.g. notification and/or topic assignment) based on the defined schedule - if the topic does not have a reply from an agent within the allotted time, then send an email to the supervisor and/or assign the topic to the supervisor
reporting - a report or API that includes the elapsed response time for each topic

I can imagine this functionality being implemented as separate forums. In the "Standard" forum, we enter the desired schedule and escalation logic. We then grant specific users access to that forum. In the "Premium" forum, we enter that specific schedule and escalation logic, then grant specific users access to that forum.

Alternatively, it could be done by user. Perhaps we could define different SLAs in the Setup module, then assign users to each SLA.

is it possible to accomplish anything like this currently? I am wondering if there is some combination of UserEcho webhooks and Microsoft Flow (or Zapier, IFTTT, ...). The topic.created webhook could start the wait cycle (e.g. Microsoft Flow Do Until), then, if the topic is replied to by an agent within the allotted time, the wait cycle ends; otherwise, it sends an email. Perhaps it could use the UserEcho API to periodically check the topic for new comments?

What about the reporting issue? Is there a way to compute the average response time across topics (either per forum, or per user)?

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Vladimir Mullagaliyev co-founder

7 years ago
Under review

Hello Mathew,

We are actually work in this direction. We have done some parts of this task already but still not ready to release it. Will do our best to finish it soon and you will be added for a beta-test.

Here is some screenshots.

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7 years ago

Quote from Vladimir Mullagaliyev

Thanks for the quick response - we would be interested in testing.

Would it be possible to define different SLAs for different customers/forums?

I my original question, I suggested assigning an SLA to a set of users. That might work, as long as the user can choose which type of issue it is (e.g. the user needs to choose whether it is Urgent or not - we do not want to assume that every topic from a given user is urgent).

Quote from Mathew Weaver

It will be possible. We have different scenario, but it still will be possible. We add agent groups. (One agent may be in more than one group). Topics will be assigned to specific agent group depends on forum, text in topic, email it comes from, etc. Then you will be able to set up priority automatically by some rules.

Also non-default SLAs apply to specific agent group, topic type, source. etc.

But I would like to repeat we still work with the task and make some changes in the logic. The final variant might be different the you see on screenshots now.

Anyway, we are always ready to improve the feature for our customers' needs after release.