An SLA is a promise, so make one you can keep
A service-level agreement for live chat is a commitment about how fast you will respond and when you are available. The most common mistake is writing an aspirational SLA — “we respond in under 30 seconds, 24/7” — that the team cannot actually staff. A broken SLA is worse than a modest one, because now you have documented your own failure. Promise what you can deliver on your worst normal day, not your best.
Separate response time from coverage window
Two numbers do most of the work. The response target is how fast you answer while you are open. The coverage window is when “open” is. Conflating them produces the classic broken promise: a 30-second target that silently does not apply at 2am. State both plainly — “first response under two minutes, Monday to Friday 8am–6pm” — and let the widget reflect that window honestly.
Be honest about after-hours
Outside the coverage window, the honest move is to switch the widget to an offline state that sets expectations and captures a message, not to leave a live-looking chat that no one is watching. An SLA that quietly excludes nights and weekends is fine — as long as the visitor at 2am is told that, rather than left waiting for a reply that is not coming until morning.
Set targets against reality, then tighten
Before you commit to a number, measure what you actually do now. If your median first response is ninety seconds, do not announce thirty. Publish a target you are already beating most of the time, then tighten it as staffing and tooling improve. An SLA is a floor you reliably clear, not a stretch goal you occasionally hit.
Measure it without gaming it
Measure first response to a real human reply, track the median and the tail (not just the average), and report against the coverage window rather than the full clock. Beware the incentive to auto-reply instantly just to stop the SLA timer — that games the metric while leaving the visitor exactly as unhelped as before. The number should track the experience, or it is worse than no number.
How MyLiveChat helps you hold the line
MyLiveChat's online/offline behavior, business-hours handling, and response reporting give you the pieces an SLA needs: a widget that tells the after-hours truth, and the timing data to check whether you are actually meeting the promise you made. The SLA is your commitment; the reports are how you keep yourself honest about it.