Response-time targets

What it is for

A response-time target says how soon a customer is owed an answer: a first response once a case, and a next reply after each message of theirs that starts a wait. It is counted only inside your business hours (Settings, Business hours, /settings/hours). While it runs, every case carries a countdown — on the case and on its row in the queue: grey, then yellow when it is due soon, then red when it is overdue. A missed target is written on the case, once for each wait, where a flow can act on it ("A first response missed"), and the Support report lists the cases that missed theirs.

The four places a target is set

A business day is your own open hours on a day you open, averaged over the days you open: 8 hours for Monday to Friday, nine to five. So "one business day" from 3 PM on a Monday is 3 PM on Tuesday. Where your organization opens on no day at all, a target in business days sets nothing, and the next one in the order applies.

Which target a case counts

One rule, stated above the priorities on the Business hours page:

1. Its priority's, where you set one for that priority;
2. otherwise the support address it was written to, where that address has one;
3. otherwise its product's;
4. otherwise the organization's.

The first response and each next reply are decided this way on their own: an urgent case whose priority sets only a first response counts the next level's next-reply target.

The priority comes first because it is the one thing on the list a person chose about this case: the address and the product say where a case came from, the priority says how much it matters. It comes first even where it is longer — a Low target of two business days beats privacy@'s four hours. If you want an address's target to win for some priority, leave that priority without a target: a priority with none decides nothing.

Setting the targets by priority

On Settings, Business hours, under the organization's own target, Response-time targets by priority lists the four priorities, each with its target in words ("A first response within one business hour, and each next reply within 2 business hours.") or "No target of its own: its cases count the next one in the order."

1. Press Change beside a priority.
2. Choose Counted in: Business hours or Business days.
3. Type A first response within and Each next reply within — a number, like 1 or 0.5. Leave one empty to set none for it.
4. Press Save the target. To take a priority's target away, empty both and save: its cases count the next one in the order.

A target is above none and at most 2,000 business hours, or 90 business days. A priority's target turns yellow ("due soon") one business hour before its deadline. Whoever may change the organization's settings (an Owner or an Administrator, among the ready-made roles) sets them; every member reads them.

When a case's priority changes

Its target changes at once — and the new target is counted from when the customer started waiting (the case's opening for a first response, their earliest unanswered message for a next reply), never from the moment of the change. So a case raised to Urgent two hours after it arrived, where Urgent's target is one hour, is overdue straight away, and the next quarter-hour check writes the miss on the case. Lowered again afterwards, the case's countdown follows the new target, and the miss already written stays written: it happened.

Missed targets on the Support report

Reports, Support (/reports/support) lists under Missed targets each case opened in the dates whose first reply came after its target, or that went past it with no reply (to its close, or to now) — the furthest past first — with the target that applied, where it came from, and by how much. It is also in the CSV file. The list holds the cases your role reaches, narrowed by Whose; Reports says more.