SLA

SLA (Service Level Agreement) is the service level agreement — the maximum time your company commits to responding to each stage of the funnel. On WhatsApp, where the customer's expectation is an almost immediate response, defining and fulfilling SLA is the difference between closing and losing the sale.

Realistic SLA per stage of the WhatsApp funnel

Step	Recommended SLA	Why this time
First response to new lead	< 5 minutes	Lead who waits more than 30 minutes has 10x less chance of qualifying.
Response to lead in qualification	< 1 hour	Customer still remembers the context. Above that, relevance is lost.
Response to negotiation lead	< 2 hours	There is already a relationship, but the urgency is still high.
Response to active customer	< 4 hours	Balances attention with not overloading the attendant.
After-sales / recurring FAQ	< 24 hours	No urgency, but the customer expects a response at some point.

How to meet aggressive SLA without a large team

The secret is to separate what needs human from what doesn't. Chatbot welcome resolves first response in seconds for all leads. Human only takes over when the bot has finished qualifying. Result: First response SLA drops from hours to seconds, even with a small team. campaign

Metrics that matter

• Average first response time — measured per funnel stage.
• % within SLA — goal: 90%+ of conversations answered within the deadline.
• Backlog — number of conversations that exceeded the SLA and were not responded to.

Realistic SLA is better than optimistic SLA

Promising 5 minutes and responding within 2 hours is worse than promising 2 hours and responding within 1. Customers who know their expectations are not anxious. Well-communicated SLA becomes a competitive differentiator: "we will respond to you within 5 minutes during business hours".

See: CRM for WhatsApp and sales funnel.