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Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a documented commitment to specific levels of service. SLAs typically cover:

  • First-response time — e.g., reply within 4 business hours for high-priority tickets
  • Resolution time — e.g., resolve within 2 business days
  • Uptime — e.g., 99.9% monthly platform availability
  • Penalty — what the customer gets if you miss (credits, refunds, exec engagement)

SLA tiers

Common pattern is to tier by customer plan:

  • Starter — 24-hour first response, no resolution SLA
  • Professional — 8-hour first response, 2-day resolution
  • Enterprise — 1-hour first response, custom resolution, 99.9% uptime

Why SLAs matter

For enterprise procurement, SLAs are non-negotiable. For SMB, they're a trust signal. Miss them too often and renewals get harder.

How BlueHill helps

SLA timers attach to tickets automatically based on customer tier. Breaches escalate to managers. Reports show SLA-attainment rates by team, category, and customer cohort.

Related: Tickets · Escalations