SLA timers and escalation: what happens when nobody responds in time
Every request in the Team inbox has a deadline. It's called an SLA (service-level agreement: the time you give your team to respond). If nobody acknowledges the request before the deadline, Voxido escalates it: a new, critical copy goes to the next team up.
Example: at Brightway, a customer asks for a refund on WhatsApp. The request goes to Support with a 10-minute SLA. Nobody acknowledges it. After 10 minutes it moves to Supervisors, marked critical.
Find it: Sidebar → Settings → People → ⋯ on a person → Edit → Calls and alerts → More alert settingsWho can use it: Owners and Admins
Choose your SLA and escalation
| If your requests are… | Reply within | Escalates to | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urgent (a clinic emergency, a guest locked out) | 5 minutes | A manager team | Someone senior should know fast. |
| Normal (a sales lead, a booking change) | 10–15 minutes | A lead or supervisor team | Leads cool down if nobody calls. |
| Can wait (a document request, a follow-up) | 60 minutes or more | (no escalation) | Nobody needs to be woken up. |
| For a one-person business | Any | (no escalation) | There's nobody to escalate to. |
Keep a team's settings the same
Give everyone in a team the same Reply within and Escalates to. Voxido reads them from the person who was added to the team first.
Set the deadline and the next team
- Open Settings → People, and click ⋯ → Edit on a person. You'll see: the Edit person dialog.
- Under Calls and alerts, click More alert settings. You'll see: the folded header sums it up, for example "Reply within 10 min · Escalates to Supervisors".
- Set Reply within (minutes): "Escalate if nobody acknowledges within this time." Use 1 to 1440 (a day). It starts at 10.
- Pick Escalates to: another team, or (no escalation).
- Click Save changes. You'll see: "Person updated". Do the same for everyone in the team.
Some requests set their own deadline. A Call back a caller request uses If nobody answers from Call routing (15 minutes to start). When someone replies on WhatsApp with a time, that time becomes the new deadline.
How the clock works
- The clock runs while a request is new, delivered, or taken with a promised time.
- Acknowledge stops it. An acknowledged request never escalates on its own.
- Voxido checks for overdue requests about every 30 seconds, so a request can sit a few seconds past its deadline.
- The request's Next step card shows the clock: On track, then At risk (60% of the time used), then Breached, with the time left or over. The list shows "41m left", "Due in 6m" or "Overdue 14h".
- Priority doesn't change the deadline. It only changes the badge and the sort.
What happens on escalation
- Voxido creates a new request for the Escalates to team. It's marked Critical, and its title starts with "[Escalated L1]".
- The new request keeps the same deadline length as the first one.
- The old request is marked Escalated. Its history stays linked.
- The new team is alerted on their channels.
- If someone had promised a time on WhatsApp and missed it, the customer gets one message: "Sorry for the wait — your request is taking a little longer than expected…"
The new request can escalate again, up to level L5. The Escalation line in the request's Details shows where it is, for example "escalated to L1 · Managers next".
You can also escalate by hand: in the request, click ⋯ → Escalate to (team).
When escalation stops
A request stops climbing when:
- Someone clicks Acknowledge or Mark complete, or replies on WhatsApp.
- The team has (no escalation). The Details say "top of chain".
- The next team has nobody in it. Escalate is greyed out: "No next team with people on it".
- It reached level L5: "Already at the highest escalation level (L5)".
In the last three cases the request stays in Open, but its clock stops. Someone must pick it up by hand.
Check for empty teams
If your escalation points at a team with nobody in it, requests quietly stop there. Add people to that team, or change Escalates to. A Backup team in Request routing helps too. See People and teams.
Common problems
A request escalated even though someone saw it. Seeing it isn't enough. Click Acknowledge, or reply on WhatsApp with a time.
Escalation never happens. Check that Escalates to is set on the person who was added to the team first, and that the next team has people in it.