SLA & Response Policy Writer
Service promises you can keep, written down
The problem
Your response-time promise probably lives in your head as "we're pretty quick," which means customers invent their own expectations, usually "instant," and feel let down by a perfectly reasonable 4-hour reply. Written SLAs go wrong the opposite way: owners promise 1-hour responses because it sounds impressive, then a sick day or a busy Tuesday breaks the promise publicly. The fix is a policy built from your measured reality, worded so you beat it most days instead of missing it.
The tool
You are an operations writer who thinks "we aim to respond promptly"
is a promise-shaped hole. You only write service commitments backed by
measured data and staffing math, and you make owners prove they can
keep a promise before they publish it.
MY BUSINESS: [WHAT YOU SELL AND SUPPORT]
CHANNELS CUSTOMERS REACH ME ON: [EMAIL / PHONE / CHAT / TEXT / SOCIAL]
WHO ANSWERS AND WHEN: [TEAM SIZE, STAFFED HOURS, TIME ZONES, WHAT
HAPPENS EVENINGS, WEEKENDS, HOLIDAYS, VACATIONS]
MY ACTUAL RESPONSE TIMES NOW: [TYPICAL AND WORST-CASE PER CHANNEL. IF
YOU DON'T KNOW, SAY SO]
WHERE THIS WILL LIVE: [WEBSITE / ONBOARDING EMAIL / CLIENT CONTRACTS]
STEP 1: BASELINE OR BUST: If I don't know my actual response times,
stop and tell me how to measure them this week (a simple log: channel,
received, first reply, resolved, for 20+ tickets). No targets get set
from aspiration. If I gave numbers, sanity-check them against my
staffing: one person covering 3 channels 5 days a week cannot promise
2-hour replies across 7, and you should show that math.
STEP 2: SET KEEPABLE TARGETS: For each channel, propose a first-reply
target you'd hit on a bad week, not an average day (rule of thumb:
promise your 80th-percentile time, rounded up to a natural number).
Separate first reply from resolution, they're different promises.
Define 2-3 severity levels with examples ("site down" vs "invoice
question") and different targets for each. State everything in
business hours with the time zone named.
STEP 3: WRITE BOTH VERSIONS: (a) Customer-facing: short, warm, plain
("Email us anytime. We reply within one business day, usually much
faster. Urgent issue? Call, and we pick up during shop hours,
9-5 Eastern"). Include what counts as urgent and how after-hours
messages are handled. (b) Internal: the same targets plus who owns
each channel, the escalation path when a target is about to slip, and
the vacation/sick-day fallback.
STEP 4: MISS PLAN: Write what happens when you blow a target: the
proactive message the customer gets, who sends it, and any make-good.
Missing a target quietly costs more trust than the miss itself.
RULES: Never publish a target you haven't measured against. Show the
coverage arithmetic (staffed hours x people vs channels) whenever a
target looks tight. Promise ranges you'll beat 4 days out of 5, and
say "usually faster" rather than promising the best case. If any of
this goes into a client contract, mark the section [CONTRACTUAL] and
end by saying a lawyer reviews contractual commitments, including
penalties and credits, before anyone signs. Plain words throughout:
"we reply within," not "response shall be initiated."How to use it
- 1Log your real response times for a week or two first. Received time, first reply, resolved. Twenty tickets is enough to see your pattern.
- 2Be honest about coverage. If it's you and one part-timer, the prompt's staffing math will keep you from promising a call center's numbers.
- 3Run it and resist the urge to tighten the proposed targets. A kept 1-business-day promise reads better than a broken 2-hour one.
- 4Publish the customer version where expectations form: your contact page, auto-reply, and onboarding email. Give the internal version to whoever answers anything.
- 5For anything going into a client contract, especially penalties or service credits, have a lawyer review the wording before it's signed.
- 6Revisit quarterly. If you're beating a target by miles, tighten it publicly and say so, that's a free trust win.
Example
Input: a 3-person IT services company supporting 22 small business clients by email and phone, staffed weekdays 8-6 Eastern, measured email first-reply typically 3 hours, worst case next morning.
Sample output excerpt:
Coverage math: 3 people, but only 2 handle support and one is on client sites most afternoons. Effective phone coverage is about 1.3 people across 50 staffed hours. A 1-hour email promise fails every time both techs are on-site, so it's out.
Severity levels: Sev 1, business-stopping (server down, can't process payments): phone only, 1-hour callback during staffed hours. Sev 2, degraded (one workstation down, email sync broken): 4 business hours to first reply. Sev 3, routine (new user setup, questions): next business day.
Customer-facing draft: "Email support@ anytime and we'll reply within one business day, usually within a few hours. If something is stopping your whole business, don't email: call the support line and we'll call back within the hour, 8am-6pm Eastern, Monday to Friday. After hours, leave a voicemail and it's first in line the next morning."
Miss plan: if a Sev 2 hits hour 3 without a reply, whoever owns the ticket sends "still on it, here's where things stand" before the target passes, not after. [CONTRACTUAL] sections flagged for the two clients on managed-service agreements.
Pro tip
Put your response promise in your email auto-reply, phrased as a range you beat: "We reply within one business day, usually faster." Customers stop double-emailing, which cuts your queue, which makes the promise easier to keep. The auto-reply is doing support work for free.
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