SLA Breaches (live), Intercom

Live count of open Intercom conversations that have crossed their first-response or resolution SLA target. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it.

Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Helpdesk / Customer Support

Open conversations that have breached their first-response or resolution SLA target, listed live so you can rescue them before the customer escalates.

At a glance

SLA Breaches (live) is the alarm bell of your Intercom inbox. It counts the open conversations that have already missed the response or resolution clock your team committed to, and lists them so a support lead can reassign or jump in immediately. For Blitz, a sports retailer where a delayed answer on a kit order can mean a lost game-day sale, this card is the difference between a recoverable wait and a one-star review. Treat any non-zero value as a live task list, not a report.

What it counts	Open Intercom conversations (state = open) whose elapsed time since the customer’s last message exceeds the configured SLA target — derived from conversation.sla_applied and the conversation.statistics reply/close timestamps. Each breached conversation is a row in the alert list.
Sample type	Real-time read of the conversations endpoint (search filtered to open + SLA-attached), evaluated against the live clock at refresh. Not a historical average.
Why it matters	Every row is a customer who is already waiting longer than you promised. Breaches drive negative CSAT, refund requests, and chargebacks. Clearing them fast is the single highest-leverage thing a support lead does in a shift.
Reading the value	0 is the only good number. Any count above zero is an action queue — open the list, triage by age and customer value, and reassign or reply. A rising count mid-shift signals understaffing or a volume spike.
Currency	number
Time window	RT
Alert trigger	>0
Sentiment key	sla_attainment
Roles	owner, operations

Calculation

Vortex IQ pulls open conversations from the Intercom conversations search endpoint and, for each, reads conversation.sla_applied to find the applicable target. It then compares the SLA target against the live conversation.statistics fields — time_to_first_response (or, if no agent has replied yet, the elapsed time since created_at) for first-response SLAs, and the open duration for resolution SLAs. Any conversation whose elapsed time exceeds its target is flagged as breached and added to the list. The headline number is the row count; the underlying list carries conversation ID, assignee, customer, age, and which SLA was missed.

Worked example

A representative reading of SLA Breaches (live) for Blitz on a busy Saturday morning. Blitz runs a 1-hour first-response SLA on its support inbox. At 10:42 the card shows 4. Opening the list, the support lead sees two conversations about a delayed boxing-glove order (assigned, agent replied 70 minutes ago, now awaiting follow-up past the resolution target), one unassigned question about sizing that has sat 1h 18m with no first reply, and one VIP wholesale account waiting 2 hours. The lead reassigns the unassigned sizing query to an available agent, pings the VIP account personally, and the count drops to 2 within ten minutes. Because the card is real-time, she watches it fall as each breach is cleared. For a deeper read on why breaches clustered this morning, she opens Vortex Mind to trace the spike to a flash-sale email that went out at 09:30; to ask “which agents have the most breaches open right now?” she uses Ask Viq.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Card	Why merchants reach for it
ic_fr_sla_attainment	The percentage view of the same promise — what share of conversations you hit on time, so you can see whether live breaches are an exception or the norm.
ic_alert_oldest_open	The single worst-aged conversation; breaches and oldest-open usually point at the same neglected threads.
ic_alert_unassigned	Unassigned conversations are the most common source of new breaches — clear these to stop the breach count climbing.
ic_median_first_response_time	The typical wait; if median is creeping up, breaches will follow.
ic_alert_volume_spike	A volume spike is the leading indicator that breaches are about to appear — watch both together during sales events.

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Intercom’s own dashboard:

In Intercom, open Inbox and filter the conversation list by your SLA — Intercom shows an SLA badge (and a red “missed” state) on each conversation once a target is breached. For the aggregate view, go to Reports → SLAs (or Reports → Conversation performance), which reports SLA hit rate and the number of conversations that missed target over a chosen period. The live count on this Vortex IQ card maps most closely to filtering the Inbox by “SLA missed” and “Open”.

Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:

Reason	Direction	What to do
Live vs reporting lag. This card is real-time at refresh; Intercom’s Reports view often aggregates with a short processing delay.	Vortex IQ may lead	Compare against the live Inbox filter, not the Reports tab, for a true like-for-like.
SLA definition. Vortex IQ evaluates the SLA target attached to each conversation (sla_applied); if your Intercom SLA rules changed recently, in-flight conversations may carry the old target.	Variable	Confirm which SLA rule set is active and whether it applies to all teams.
Open-state scope. Vortex IQ counts state = open; snoozed conversations are excluded here (see the Snoozed Conversations card). Intercom’s Inbox filters may include snoozed by default.	Vortex IQ may read lower	Match the snoozed/open filter between the two views.
Business-hours SLAs. If your SLA pauses outside office hours, both systems must use the same office-hours calendar.	Variable	Confirm the office-hours schedule matches your Intercom workspace settings.

Cross-connector reconciliation: when breaches spike alongside failed payments, cross-reference the Support Spike on Failed Payments card. For divergence investigations, use Vortex Mind.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Q: How often does SLA Breaches (live) update? It is a real-time card — it re-evaluates open conversations against the live clock on each refresh (typically every few minutes for live integrations). Force a manual refresh from the dashboard if you need the count to the second during an incident.

Q: Why does my Intercom Inbox show a different number? The usual reasons are snoozed-state scope (this card counts only open, not snoozed), reporting lag in Intercom’s Reports tab, and recent changes to your SLA rules that leave in-flight conversations on the old target. Filter the live Inbox by “SLA missed” + “Open” to reconcile.

Q: A conversation shows as breached but the customer hasn’t actually been ignored — why? Resolution SLAs count total open time, so a conversation that’s mid-back-and-forth can still breach its resolution target even while an agent is actively working it. Use the first-response SLA view to separate “never answered” from “still being worked”.

Q: Can I customise the breach threshold? The breach is defined by your Intercom SLA targets, which Vortex IQ reads directly. The card’s alert threshold (>0) is configurable per profile in the Alert Rules tab if you want to suppress alerts below a small count.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

SLA Breaches (live) is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Intercom and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English.

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