Case management SLAs: what to promise a client and how to track it

The rule

A service level is a promise about your firm's response, not the consulate's decision. The ones clients notice: time to first reply, time to a complete checklist, time from complete documents to filing, and update cadence while the file is with the authority. Publish them and track them; unmeasured SLAs become arguments.

Reasonable defaults for a visa practice: reply within one business day, checklist within two, file within three business days of complete documents, an update at least weekly.

What the consulate or authority actually counts

• Timestamp of every client message and your reply
• Date documents were complete versus date filed
• Days since last update per open file
• Escalations and their outcome
• On-time rate against the guaranteed dates you quoted

Where it goes wrong

• Promising decision dates you do not control
• No owner for a file when the case officer is on leave
• Updates only when the client chases
• SLA measured from when you noticed, not from when the client wrote

How vistolane for business handles it

The case board shows SLA timers per file (details 72h, documents 48h, review 120h by default), unanswered messages over 24 hours and breaches on the KPI dashboard. Read receipts on messages and the timeline give the client the same view, which ends most disputes.

Your public scorecard shows on-time rate and typical reply time to prospective clients.

Worked example: a corporate client with 60 cases a quarter

An immigration practice in Bengaluru wins an IT services client sending about sixty UK and Schengen business-visitor cases a quarter. The client's procurement team asks for an SLA schedule. The practice offers two client-facing numbers, a 48-hour document deadline from intake and a four-working-hour reply time, and keeps the filing lead time of three working days internal but measured.

In the first quarter the document turnaround averaged 3.1 days, of which 1.9 days were client-side waiting on passports and letters. The monthly report showed both halves of that number, which moved the conversation from the practice's speed to the client's own HR process; the client introduced a pre-travel document pack and the turnaround fell to 1.4 days. Reply time held at a median of 52 minutes with a 90th percentile of 3.4 hours. Two agency-caused breaches were reported with their causes, a holiday cover gap and a missed appointment release, and both fixes were visible in the next report. The contract renewed for two years at a higher per-case fee; the procurement team cited the reporting, not the price.

Setting SLAs up in the workspace

• Create one SLA profile per case type with the four clocks: document deadline, filing lead time, reply time and update cadence
• Assign an owner and a backup to every case so a clock never runs without a name against it
• Switch on client-wait pauses: the document clock stops when the ball is with the client and the pause is shown on the client's portal
• Set the breach warning at 80 percent of each clock so the team sees amber before red
• Add the SLA summary block to the engagement letter template and to the monthly client report
• Review breaches every Monday: cause, fix, and whether the clock itself was unrealistic

Start with generous clocks you can hit for a month, then tighten. A visible, kept promise builds more trust than an aggressive one broken twice.

Benchmarks by case type

Publish the two numbers the client can feel, the document deadline and the reply time, and keep the filing SLA internal but measured. Every promise must have a clock in the system, an owner and a visible breach state; an SLA that lives in an engagement letter and nowhere else is a liability, not a service.

How to measure and report

• Document turnaround: days from intake to a complete, checked set; split the client's delay from yours, because the clock pauses while you wait on the client and that pause is reported separately
• Filing lead time: working days from complete set to lodged; compare with the published government processing time so the client sees where the weeks go
• Reply time: median and 90th percentile per case owner; the 90th percentile is the number clients remember
• Breaches: count, cause (client, consulate, agency) and the fix; publish the agency-caused number to the team weekly
• On-time decisions: decisions by the quoted date as a share of filed cases; this is the figure a guarantee rests on

Report monthly to clients who send volume: cases filed, on-time share, average document turnaround, and the three slowest files with the reason. Corporate clients renew on this report more than on price.

Promising a date without promising an outcome

The defensible promise is about your own work: documents verified by a date, filed by a date, a decision by a date you can underwrite with a refund of your fee. Approval is never yours to promise and the engagement letter should say so in one sentence, in the same type size as the rest. Vistolane's own guarantee reads: Decision by the date we quote, or your Vistolane fee back. We can't guarantee approval; no one can. Agencies on the workspace can quote the same date to their clients because the clock, the pause rules and the breach state are already in the system.

Questions, answered