Service level agreement (SLA)

A service level agreement (SLA) is the contract that says, in plain terms, how good your phone service has to be. A common inbound SLA reads "80 percent of calls answered within 20 seconds." It turns a vague promise into a number you can measure every day and report against, which matters whether the agreement is with an outside client or an internal team that owns customer support.

The SLA target is usually expressed through the Service level percentage, and it leans heavily on the Average speed of answer (ASA). If callers wait too long, your Abandonment rate climbs and you start missing the agreement. The numbers that prove whether you hit it come from your Real-time report during the shift and reporting tools like QueueMetrics afterward, which roll the raw call records into the percentages a client will actually look at.

Why it drives staffing

Meeting an SLA is mostly a staffing problem. You need enough agents logged into each Ingroup to answer calls fast, and you have to plan around Shrinkage — the time people spend off the phones on breaks, training, or paused. Underestimate that and your service level slips even with a full roster on paper. Most operations build their schedules backward from the SLA: decide the target first, then work out how many seats it takes at each hour of the day.

An SLA can also cover quality, not just speed: targets for First-call resolution or a maximum 3% abandonment limit. The point is to write down what "good" means before the calls start, so everyone agrees on the score. When you review performance, compare actual Occupancy and answer speed against the agreed line rather than arguing about it after the fact, and keep the target realistic — an SLA nobody can hit just teaches the floor to ignore it. Review the agreement on a regular schedule, too, because call volumes and staffing shift over time and a target that fit last quarter can quietly become unreachable or far too easy the next.