SLA stands for Service Level Agreement — the contractual promise to the customer about how fast you’ll respond, how fast you’ll resolve, and what hours of coverage they get. In Salesforce, SLAs are operationalised via Entitlements, Entitlement Processes, Milestones, and Business Hours working together.
What an SLA typically guarantees
| Element | Example |
|---|---|
| First Response Time | Acknowledge the customer within 1 hour |
| Resolution Time | Resolve P1 issues within 4 hours, P2 within 1 business day |
| Channels available | Phone, email, chat, web — varies by tier |
| Hours of coverage | 9-5 weekdays, or 24×7 for premium |
| Compensation if missed | Service credit, refund, escalation |
| Uptime targets | 99.9% (separate from support response) |
How Salesforce models it
Account / Contract
│
└── Entitlement (the SLA hook)
│
└── Entitlement Process (the workflow)
│
└── Milestones (First Response, Resolution, etc.)
│
└── Milestone Actions (notify, escalate, reassign)When a Case is created and tied to an Account with an active Entitlement:
- Entitlement is populated on the Case (via auto-rule or Flow)
- Entitlement Process evaluates which Milestones apply
- Milestone timers start counting against the linked Business Hours
- Agent actions stop the timer (e.g. sending the first response stops the First Response milestone)
- If a milestone passes its deadline, Milestone Actions fire — escalation, notification, priority change
Business Hours and Holidays
SLAs respect calendars:
- Business Hours record defines hours of operation (e.g. Mon-Fri 9-5, with timezone)
- Holidays are added to a Business Hours record — clock pauses on those days
- Multiple Business Hours records support different regional SLAs (APAC vs EMEA)
Common SLA tiers
| Tier | First Response | Resolution | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze / Standard | 8 business hours | 5 business days | 9-5 weekdays |
| Silver / Premium | 4 business hours | 2 business days | 9-5 weekdays |
| Gold / Platinum | 1 hour | 24 hours | 24×7 with named CSM |
| Mission-Critical | 15 minutes | 4 hours | 24×7 with dedicated phone line |
Reporting on SLA
Standard reports based on Case and EntitlementMilestone give you:
- SLA attainment % — milestones met / total milestones
- Average first response vs target
- Escalation rate — cases that breached milestones
- CSAT correlated with SLA performance
When standard SLA isn’t enough
- Per-product / per-severity matrix SLAs — combine Entitlements with Apex/Flow for matrix selection
- Contractual penalties — usually handled in a Service Contract record with custom logic
- Pause SLA when waiting on customer — built-in feature: setting Status = “On Hold” pauses the milestone clock if the Entitlement Process is configured to
Common follow-ups
- Difference vs Entitlement? — SLA is the business concept; Entitlement is the Salesforce implementation.
- Can SLA pause when waiting on the customer? — Yes — configure the Entitlement Process to halt timers when Status = “On Hold”.
- Does SLA respect time zones? — Yes — driven by the linked Business Hours record’s timezone.
Verified against: Salesforce Help — Entitlements and Milestones. Last reviewed 2026-05-17 for Spring ‘26.