How 4 companies meet SLA requirements every time

When you enter into a new relationship of any kind, there’s risk involved. You’re giving up your time, your thoughts, maybe your money—and these are all things that make us vulnerable. With friends, a spouse, a partner, or a mentor, these are risks we’re all willing to take.

But in business, that’s not the case. Customers don’t want to feel at risk, and businesses want customers to rest assured that their promises will be kept. That’s where service level agreements come into play. It’s built-in assurance between you and your clients that yes, when they need you, you’ll be there.

These 4 companies are leading the pack when it comes to response time. They’re not only meeting SLAs, but are setting new standards in their industries by delivering for customers in unprecedented ways.

So what’s the secret sauce these companies are using? Nope, not Thousand Island. They’re all using Front to manage customer communication.

WizardPins responds 50x faster than competitors

WizardPins is an ecommerce business that provides custom pins, key chains, bottle openers and other fun gifts. This team is unstoppable when it comes to SLAs—so much so that they respond 50x faster than their competitors. No joke.

In their industry, the first to respond often wins the business. But custom orders take a lot of back and forth questions—quantity, artwork, coloring, sizing. While their competitors promise a response within 24 to 48 hours, WizardPins usually responds in 15 to 30 minutes or less.

What gives? They manage customer requests via shared inboxes in Front. They use Shopify, and they’ve integrated it into Front. They can access and update Shopify data directly in their inboxes. The team can duplicate an invoice more quickly and get a view of the customer instantly, so they know what to expect with any situation. Front also enables them to elicit the information they need in the first message using the message template feature.

Cisco Meraki responds in 15 minutes for critical sales support

A span of 15 minutes might be the length of time you wait for fast food in the drive thru. Or how long it takes to grab coffee in the kitchen at the office. Cisco Meraki’s internal sales support team is that fast.

They’re a 16-person Sales Support team that provides 24-hour operational support to more than 600 reps, getting 10,000 messages a month at the minimum. They serve as admins for their in-house CRM and troubleshoot issues on the spot.

Here’s how they manage it: Assignments in Front give clarity on who’s answering what email so there’s no confusion. Message templates pre-populate answers to they can reply faster. With rules, they automatically add tags to messages based on the content, so they know what the message will be about. They’ve set up reminder tags to respond within 15 minutes, so if they’re approaching the 15-minute SLA, they’re notified to follow up.

Firebox responds 2x faster over multiple channels

Firebox is a London-based eclectic retailer that creates, discovers, and sells a highly curated mix of unconventional homeware, accessories, gadgets, food, drink, and gifts. Their small support team serves thousands of shoppers via email, social media, live chat, and phone.

To respond quickly and give quality service across multiple channels, they connect all those messages to Front and manage them in one place. With Zendesk, their average response rate to customer emails was nine hours, but now they respond in less than four hours.

They’re saving an estimated 80 hours a week by not switching tools and being able to collaborate on messages in Front. They can tag and assign different customer conversations to one another without any fuss.

Boostability meets 24-hour SLAs while giving white-label service

Imagine managing 26,000 customers with 100 people. That’s what Boostability does—and they have a 24-hour SLA. Boostability provides SEO and website development services for small businesses to elevate their online presence.

Since the Boostability team switches between hundreds of identities each day to give white-labeled service on behalf of 200 partners, they used to log into each partner’s email account to reply. That was manual, confusing, and keeping them from meeting their 24-hour SLAs. Now they’ve cut average response time from 10 hours to 4 with a few Front features. Rules remind them with an urgent tag, so they can reply when an email approaches their SLA.

For more reading on service level agreements, you can head over to our guide to hitting response time goals with Front.