Time to Close and Time to First Reply Taking Business Hours into Account
We have SLAs with customers that we respond during business hours and during weekdays within a certain time period. It would be greate if the Time to Close and the Time to First Reply KPIs could have an option that they are calculated based on business hours.
E.g. If a ticket is opened on Thursday and closed on Monday, then the time to close would be 3 days (since Saturday and Sunday are not counted given they are the Weekend).
Multiple teams are reviewing this idea, in part to enable more 'time between' reporting. Thank you all for offering your thoughts, we deeply appreciate it.
I'm aware that there's SLA's in Hubspot now, but they're not enough for a professional customer support team to do their daily work. I've recently been running a project migrating from Zendesk to Hubspot Service Hub, where SLA metrics were a huge topic.
Despite the migration solving a lot of other issues, this remains a part where the client is hamstringed to this day: the lack of SLA metrics like Next Reply Time, Agent Work Time, Requester Wait time and Time until next breach (based on which other SLA metrics will breach first). Zendesk has these SLA metrics nailed quite well, andthis articleneatly visualizes what each of those metrics means and does.
Why do they need these metrics?
They're not just used for reporting. The Next Reply Time metric is the core metric used to prioritize which tickets agents need to work on throughout the day. They sort their tickets based on which ticket will first breach this NRT or the AWT. So we've done our best to recreate them in Hubspot. I've used Operations Hub to, what feels like, bend time and space itself to build a solution that calculates the Next Reply Time, taking business hours/days and even holidays into account, but instead of a duration, I have it as a Due Date. It's workable but not ideal.
Why should Hubspot prioritize this?
This project was for a Support team that were real power users of their support software, with well thought-out processes that they were constantly revising and optimizing. In short, they're the kind of team I think Hubspot would see as an ideal user of Service Hub. That they see the lacking of these metrics as a big problem should be a clear sign that this needs a solution to make Service Hub a viable competitor of the likes of Zendesk.
Aren't there any workarounds?
Trying to get a near-realtime AWT has me doing more complex wizardry. I get close, but I cannot get this calculated near-real time. I think the core of the issue is that Hubspot doesn't keep a running timer, to show the difference between a datetime property and 'now'. Even if these SLA metrics weren't supported natively, if it could somehow do that, I could probably build them through Ops Hub.
I was under the impression that this feature was readily accessible in HubSpot, as clearly indicated within the SLA Limits. However, it's evident that the feature is not yet operational. Our choice to migrate from Zendesk to HubSpot as our ticketing solution was significantly guided by the prospect of a robust SLA monitoring system, including the ability for SLAs to halt outside of our specified working hours. The realization that this capability remains unavailable post-transition is indeed unsettling.
Given that this feature is explicitly outlined within the SLA Limits, I humbly urge for its swift implementation. The expectation set by this documentation underpins the foundation of our decision to utilize HubSpot. Rapid progress in this area would not only fulfill a committed feature but also bridge the gap between expectation and reality.
Your attention to expediting this matter would be immensely appreciated. The alignment of the platform's functionality with its stated capabilities would undoubtedly enhance the overall user experience.
Thank you for your consideration and dedication to resolving this situation promptly.
@DNSarmiento If you're talking about having the standard SLA's count down only during working hours, that is a feature today and is working. I have a couple of portals where we use them, and I can confirm they do exactly as advertised. If they're not working for you, doublecheck that you've set it to count down during working hours instead of calendar hours, and properly set your working hours:
Some limitations that I've found with this:
It's not possible to set multiple sets of working hours without requiring a separate inbox (based on property ruling for example). For example when you have an international business across different timezones. Our client had to create and communicate a second support email address to be used with another inbox, just so they could have additional working hours.
No option to set holidays (I can appreciate that this is not high on the priority list though)
I hope this message finds you well. My current setup is aligned with our designated working hours; however, I'm consistently facing an issue regarding SLA First Response time. Specifically, this discrepancy arises when dealing with tickets that are either received before or after our official end of shift.
The system appears to include non-working hours in its calculations. In response to this concern, I have already submitted a support ticket to HubSpot, and they have acknowledged the existing limitations.
What adds to my confusion is the presence of a note within HubSpot, stating that "SLAs will pause counting down outside the working hours you provided." Regrettably, this feature does not seem to be functioning as expected, which can be quite misleading.
I appreciate your attention to this matter and look forward to any insights or solutions you might have.
@bobj I have been following this thread for a while. Currently, we are more interested in reporting on time to first response and time to close. When SLA's were launched I investigated reporting on this with SLAs switched on and in use and was not able to achieve this. Our current reports show response times that include and exclude working hours but it would be great to know if there is now a way to report on these 2 metrics only in business hours? Any advice would be highly appreciated.
While the SLA metric itself takes into account the defined "working" hours on whether it was on time, late, overdue, etc., the calculation on the Time to First Reply and Time to Close does NOT factor in working hours. It is simply a straight calculation of the total elapsed time. That is the disconnect that needs to be addressed.
Clearly a lot more. They're busy adding "AI Capabilities" with ChatSpot.
It continues to amaze me how large companies forget the average user who has to wait for over 3 years and counting to get a basic function implemented.
Why is the issue still being treated so neglected after years?
It massively distorts the KPIs of colleagues in service, which is why hubspot should urgently react here before customers look for other solutions on the market
This idea was first brought up in 2020 and it is sad to know that Hubspot has not pushed forward with this function given that this is an essesntial metric.
