SLA’s and TOS for support queries

Measuring our SLA’s for support queries is vital as it will allow us to measure the impact of response time, close time on churn and customer satisfaction levels.

It makes sense to have a higher target internally in comparison to what we promise to our clients in our terms of service

External SLA and terms of service (to add to terms of service)

Intercom support will be available between the hours of 9.30am and 5.30pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays) and therefore the SLA’s below are on the assumption clients message us within these hours. If clients message outside of our working hours we will go back to them during working hours per the SLAs below:

Intercom support

This is available on all of our paid Limited company and Sole Trader packages.

For those on our free packages, you will need to upgrade to receive Intercom support. You can look at our helpful collection of articles and use our Community forum to seek help with any queries or questions you may have.

First response time - 20 minutes or below

This is measured from the time your query is first posted through Intercom to the first response time from one our client experience team (not bot’s).

This response may not answer your query and may just be letting you know that we need to pass the query to the appropriate team.

During the months of December-January - you may experience response times above what we would usually aim for. We will do everything we can to maintain quick response times for our clients during these busy periods.

Time to close - 4 hours or below

This is measured from the time your query is first posted through Intercom to the time when the ticket is closed and not reopened. This only counts hours based on when Intercom support is available.

This should mean that any queries you have should be fully resolved by the relevant team/individual within 4 working hours. This will mean you will generally get a same day response from one of our team.

During the months of December-January - it may take us slightly longer to close queries however we will do everything we can to still provide solutions to your queries within a reasonable timeframe.

Best practice when using Intercom

  • Provide as much information as possible when sending over your queries. For instance if messaging us for advice on how many dividends to take for a tax year, please also send over details of any external income.
  • If you have multiple queries, please send these on the same message to Ember. We can then come back to all of your queries on one ticket.
  • If you have discussed a subject in detail with someone on our team and want to continue this conversation please add “FOA “Insert CX team member’s name”” to your message in Intercom.

Video support/Video consultations

The below terms of service does not include the initial demo and onboarding call which is available to all paid users. For all other video calls:

Unlimited - Sole Trade and Limited

On this price plan, we include video consultations and support. This will be in the form of a half hour video call with an accountant.

We guarantee Unlimited clients one video call per quarter, however we can allow more calls at our discretion.

The majority of queries can normally be answered via Intercom but we understand that clients on this price plan are more likely to have more involved/complex tax advice and queries that may benefit from a video call.

Please get in touch via Intercom to arrange a video consultation.

Other price plans

On our other paid price plans, video support is not included.

We may suggest a video call at our discretion if we feel it would be useful or reasonable in a particular scenario.

However we cannot guarantee the ability to have video consultations at this price plan so you will likely be asked to pay for an accountancy chat or upgrade if this is something you will need.