Choosing SLA targets that hold
An SLA is a promise to the guest and a timer for your staff. Set it to the honest time it takes to get there, and it keeps everyone accountable; set it to a wish, and it just breaches all day and gets ignored.
01Time the walk, not the task
The SLA should reflect how long it takes a staff member to acknowledge and get moving, not how long the task itself takes. Delivering towels might take two minutes of actual work but ten minutes to walk from the linen room on another floor — set the target to the ten.
A good starting point: 10 minutes for housekeeping deliveries, 5 minutes for front-desk acknowledgement, 30 minutes for a room clean, and “urgent” for anything a guest can't use their room without.
02Per-service, not one number
Every service carries its own SLA, so you are not forced into a single target across very different jobs. Tune the ones that breach often first — the report will show you which they are — rather than trying to get all of them right on day one.
03Escalation and the supervisor ping
When a request nears or passes its SLA, it escalates automatically: the priority is raised and a supervisor is pinged so a stuck request gets a second pair of eyes instead of quietly aging.
Escalation is a safety net, not the plan. If a queue escalates constantly, the fix is usually staffing or a too-tight SLA, not a faster finger on the accept button.