A service-level agreement (SLA) is a documented commitment between a provider and a customer that defines the level of service promised and how it is measured. In customer support it sets the targets a team is held to: first response within X minutes, resolution within Y hours, by channel and by priority.
An SLA usually pairs a target with a measurement window and a consequence. A target might be a first response inside 30 minutes for high-priority tickets. The measurement window defines business hours and excludes weekends or holidays. The consequence might be an internal escalation or a contractual credit if the target is missed. Good SLAs are specific by channel and severity, not a single blanket number, because a chat reply and a billing dispute are not the same promise.
Aide, the agentic AI platform for customer experience, treats the SLA as a quality floor, not a speed contest. Aide clears the high-frequency requests within the clock so the hard cases get time, not pressure. Automation acts only on intents it has been verified to resolve correctly; everything else routes to a person with the time to handle it well. The goal is meeting the SLA because the work is sorted, not because everyone is sprinting.