SLA management software and SLA ticketing system with tracking and breach alerts
Ticketagent is a help desk with SLA management built in. Every ticket gets a first response and resolution target from its priority and customer tier, the clock runs on your business hours, pauses while you wait on the customer, warns the assignee before a breach and escalates to a lead if nobody acts. SLA attainment shows up in every report, so you can prove to customers and managers that you keep your promises.
Run a ticket through an SLA policy
Paste a real customer message, pick an SLA policy and run it. You see the priority it gets, the team it goes to, the SLA clock that starts and the reply the AI agent drafts from the help center.
Ticket
- Category
- Priority
- Sentiment
- Language
- Customer intent
Routing
- Assigned team
- Rule that fired
- First response due
AI agent
Auto-resolve Hand to agent- Draft reply
- Cited article
- Confidence
- Decision
- Summary for the agent
Why support teams buy SLA management software
Most teams start tracking SLAs in a shared inbox, a spreadsheet or a weekly export. It works until the queue grows. Then the same three things go wrong: nobody sees a ticket is about to breach until after it breached, the clock counts nights and weekends so the numbers look worse than the service really is, and nobody can answer a customer who asks, "what was our response time for you last quarter?"
SLA management software fixes all three inside the tool your agents already work in. The target is set when the ticket arrives, the timer is visible in the queue, the warning comes before the deadline and the report writes itself. If you promise response times in contracts, sell a premium support tier or run an internal IT desk with agreed targets, this is the part of the help desk you cannot run by hand.
- Targets applied automatically, not remembered by agents
- Clocks that respect business hours, time zones and holidays
- Warnings before a breach, in the queue and in Slack
- Attainment you can export and show a customer
SLA policies per priority and customer tier
An SLA policy is a set of targets. You choose the conditions it applies to (priority, customer tier, inbox, category) and the targets it sets. Here is a typical setup for a B2B software company with a paid premium tier. Treat it as a starting point, not a rule.
| Policy | Applies to | First response | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | All other tickets | 8 business hours | 5 business days |
| Priority | Priority high, any tier | 2 business hours | 2 business days |
| Premium support | Customer tier Premium | 1 business hour | 1 business day |
| Urgent incident | Priority urgent | 30 minutes, 24/7 | 8 hours |
Starter includes 1 SLA policy with business hours, which is enough for one promise across the whole queue. Team and above include unlimited SLA policies, escalations and breach warnings, which is what you need once different customers are promised different times.
How the SLA clock runs on a ticket
Most arguments about SLA numbers are really arguments about when the clock should run. Ticketagent applies clear rules and shows the current state of the clock on every ticket, so an agent never has to guess.
| Ticket event | What happens to the SLA clock |
|---|---|
| New ticket arrives | Policy is applied, first response clock starts |
| Outside business hours | Clock is paused until the next business hour |
| Agent sends the first public reply | First response target is met or breached |
| Status set to pending (waiting on customer) | Resolution clock pauses |
| Customer replies | Clock resumes where it stopped |
| Priority or tier changes | Targets are recalculated from the new policy |
| Ticket solved | Resolution target is met or breached and recorded |
Internal notes do not stop the first response clock. Only a reply the customer can see counts, which keeps the number honest.
Breach warnings and escalations before the deadline
A report that tells you about breaches next week does not save any customer today. Ticketagent warns the assignee before a target runs out, at a point you choose, for example when 75 percent of the time has passed. At-risk tickets rise to the top of the queue and can post to a Slack channel. If the clock runs out and the ticket is still waiting, the escalation you set takes over: reassign to a lead, move to another team, raise the priority or notify a manager, with the ticket context attached.
- Warning threshold per policy
- At-risk tickets sorted first in the queue
- Slack alerts for breaches and near breaches
- Escalation to a lead or another team when a clock runs out
AI triage that starts the right clock
An SLA policy is only as good as the priority on the ticket. When agents set priority by hand, urgent issues wait in the general queue under the standard target. Ticketagent reads every incoming ticket and sets category, priority, sentiment and language, so the right policy is applied from the first second. The AI customer service agent also drafts a reply from your knowledge base, which is often the fastest way to meet a first response target without cutting corners. For intents you approve, it can resolve the ticket on its own, and those resolutions count toward your SLA attainment like any other.
SLA reporting you can send to a customer
Every report in Ticketagent includes SLA attainment: the share of tickets where each target was met, per policy, per team, per agent and per customer. You can filter by date range, see which tickets breached and why, and export the data. On Business, custom reports and scheduled exports send a monthly SLA summary to an account manager or a customer without anyone building it by hand.
- Attainment per policy, team, agent and customer
- First response and resolution tracked separately
- Breached tickets listed with the timeline that caused them
- Scheduled exports on Business
What to check in any SLA ticketing system
Whether you choose us or another vendor, test these before you sign. They separate tools that track SLAs from tools that only display a timer.
| Question to ask the vendor | Why it matters | Ticketagent |
|---|---|---|
| Do clocks run on business hours with holidays per team? | Without it, weekend hours count against you | Yes, per team and time zone |
| Does the clock pause on pending? | Otherwise you are measured on the customer's delay | Yes |
| Can one ticket switch policy when priority changes? | Escalated issues need the tighter target | Yes, targets recalculate |
| Are warnings sent before a breach? | Alerts after the fact change nothing | Yes, threshold per policy |
| How many SLA policies are on the entry plan? | Tiered support needs several policies | 1 on Starter, unlimited on Team and up |
| Is AI billed per resolution? | Per-resolution fees grow with volume | No, a pool per seat is included |
How to set up SLA tracking in Ticketagent
- Step 1: Set business hours, time zone and holidays for each team.
- Step 2: Create a policy per priority, and one per paid support tier if you sell one.
- Step 3: Choose the warning threshold and the escalation target for each policy.
- Step 4: Turn on AI classification so priority is set on arrival.
- Step 5: Forward your support address and watch the first week of timers on real tickets.
- Step 6: Review SLA attainment weekly and adjust targets your team cannot keep.
Need help choosing numbers? The support SLA policy guide walks through realistic targets.
SLA management software questions
You track SLA in a ticketing system by attaching a policy with response and resolution targets to every ticket, running a timer on business hours, pausing it while the ticket waits on the customer and recording whether each target was met. Ticketagent does this automatically and shows attainment in every report.
An SLA in a ticketing system is a set of time targets, usually first response and resolution, that the help desk applies to each ticket based on rules such as priority or customer tier. The system counts the time, warns before a breach and records the result.
Response time is how long the customer waits for the first human reply. Resolution time is how long it takes to fix the issue and close the ticket. Ticketagent tracks them as separate targets, because a fast reply with a slow fix and a slow reply with a fast fix are different problems.
Yes, in Ticketagent the resolution clock pauses when a ticket is set to pending while you wait on the customer, and resumes when the customer replies. Hours outside your business hours and holidays are not counted either.
Starter includes 1 SLA policy with business hours. Team, at $59 per agent per month or $49 billed yearly, adds unlimited SLA policies, escalations and breach warnings. Business and Enterprise include everything in Team.
Yes, you set a customer tier on the organization and create a policy for that tier. A premium customer's tickets then get the tighter targets automatically, even when the same agents handle both queues.
SLA management by plan
Starter is $29 per agent per month ($24 billed yearly) with 1 SLA policy and business hours. Team is $59 ($49 billed yearly) with unlimited SLA policies, escalations and breach warnings. Business is $99 ($82 billed yearly) and adds custom reports and scheduled exports. See help desk software pricing for every plan.