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A phone answer-time SLA states a goal such as 75% of callers waiting for an agent are answered within 30 seconds. OpenCX records every wait for an agent and grades it against the policy that applies, so you can report compliance, outcomes, and answer times by day, hour, team, and agent.

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How answer time is measured

The clock starts when a caller begins waiting for an agent: when the call enters a team queue or starts ringing agents, after any menu, greeting, or AI conversation. It stops when an agent accepts the call, not when the agent first speaks. Only time inside the policy’s office hours counts, the same as chat SLAs. A policy without office hours counts all waiting time. A caller can wait more than once in a session, for example when a call is handed back to the AI agent and transferred again. Each wait is graded on its own. Each wait ends with one outcome:

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Create a phone answer-time policy

Open Settings → SLA and create or edit a policy. You need SLA write permission. Add a phone answer-time target alongside the reply and resolution targets, or create a policy with only a phone target. A policy with only a phone target grades calls alone: it can’t be applied to sessions, and workflows don’t offer it. Editing a policy only affects callers who start waiting afterwards. Waits already recorded keep the grade they received, and deleting a policy keeps its name on the waits it graded.

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Choose which policy applies

OpenCX grades each wait with the first policy it finds:
  1. The team’s Phone answer-time SLA, set in Settings → Teams on the team whose queue the caller is waiting in.
  2. Otherwise, the Default answer-time SLA, set in Settings → Voice & Telephony.
Calls rung without a team use the workspace default. With neither policy, waits are still recorded with their outcome and answer time, but they are not graded and do not count toward compliance.

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How agents are judged

Every ring an agent receives is recorded as answered, declined, missed (their ring ran out), or canceled (another agent answered or the caller left). Agents are judged only on their own rings:
  • Answer rate = answered ÷ (answered + declined + missed). Canceled rings are not held against anyone.
  • Time to answer runs from the agent’s ring to their accept. The queue time before their ring is never charged to them.
  • Answered within target counts the agent’s answers whose own ring-to-accept time was within the target. A wait can miss the team’s SLA while the agent who finally answered it is credited.
When a teammate’s account is deleted, their past rings still count in the totals but no longer appear in the per-agent report.

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Report on answer time

Ask Companion, or have it build a mini app, for the view you need: compliance against the goal, outcomes and abandon rate, average and p90 answer time, breakdowns by day, hour of day (to find understaffed hours), team, and agent. Mini apps read two reporting tables:
  • report_phone_queue_waits: one row per finished wait, with its team, outcome, wait in seconds, who answered, the policy and target it was graded on, and the result (met, missed, excluded, or empty when no policy applied or the call failed).
  • report_phone_ring_attempts: one row per ring an agent received, with its result, ring length, and the grade of the wait it belonged to.
The same figures are available in the Phone answer-time analytics API and in the MCP tools get_phone_answer_analytics_overview, get_phone_answer_analytics_breakdown, and get_phone_answer_analytics_agents. Rates are returned as fractions from 0 to 1. Reports → Data Export includes phone answer columns per session: the number of waits, the first wait in seconds, who answered first, and the worst answer-time SLA result in the session.

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Limitations

  • Answer time measures the accept click. It does not include time the caller spent in a menu or with the AI agent before waiting.
  • Per-call evidence for workflows stays in Get Phone Call Details. Answer-time reporting aggregates waits; it does not change those fields.