Open conversations with no admin reply yet, waiting_since older than the first-response SLA.
At a glance
Unanswered (awaiting first reply) is the urgent slice of Blitz’s backlog: open conversations where no agent has replied yet and the customer has now been waiting longer than your first-response SLA. These are the people forming their first impression of your support — staring at silence. Every one of them is actively breaching SLA right now, so unlike the broader Open Conversations count, the healthy reading here is zero. When this number is anything but zero, someone is waiting too long and the clock is still running.
| What it counts | Open conversations with zero admin replies (conversation.statistics.first_admin_reply_at is null / count_assignments reply count is zero) whose waiting_since is older than your first-response SLA target. |
| Sample type | Real-time. Read live from open conversations and compared against the SLA clock. |
| Why it matters | A first reply is the single biggest driver of CSAT and trust. A customer who waits beyond SLA for any reply is the most likely to escalate, churn or leave a negative rating. This card isolates them so you can clear them before the broader backlog noise hides them. |
| Reading the value | Zero is the only good reading — every counted conversation is already past its first-response target. The alert fires whenever any conversation is breaching, so a non-zero value is a call to action, not a trend to watch. |
| Currency | number |
| Time window | RT |
| Alert trigger | >0 breaching SLA |
| Sentiment key | sla_attainment |
| Roles | owner, operations |
Calculation
Vortex IQ queries open conversations and keeps only those that have received no admin reply —conversation.statistics.first_admin_reply_at is still null. For each, it measures how long the customer has been waiting (waiting_since, set when the customer last sent a message awaiting a reply) against your configured first-response SLA, honouring your Intercom office hours. Any conversation past that target is counted. Operator/bot messages and notes do not count as a first reply; only a genuine admin reply stops the clock.
Worked example
A representative reading of Unanswered (awaiting first reply) for Blitz first thing in the morning. The card shows 4 and the alert is red. The first-response SLA is 1 hour during office hours. The support lead opens the four conversations: three came in at 6am before the team logged on and have now waited two hours, and one slipped through assigned to an agent who called in sick. The lead replies to the three overnight ones with a quick acknowledgement (stopping each clock) and reassigns the orphaned conversation to herself. The count drops to zero. The pattern — overnight arrivals breaching before the shift starts — points to either an earlier start or an out-of-hours auto-reply, which the lead sets up so the clock does not start counting against an empty office. To see how often this happens, open First-Response SLA Attainment; to find the breaching conversations grouped by cause, ask Ask Viq “which conversations are past their first-response SLA right now?”Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why merchants reach for it |
|---|---|
ic_alert_sla_breach | The live alert list of every breaching conversation, so you can action each one directly. |
ic_sla_attainment | Shows what share of conversations hit their first-response target over the week — the trend behind today’s breaches. |
ic_median_first_response | The typical wait for a first reply; rising median often precedes a rise in unanswered breaches. |
ic_alert_unassigned | Unassigned conversations are the most common reason a first reply never lands. |
ic_open_conversations | The full backlog this urgent slice is drawn from. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Intercom’s own dashboard: In the Inbox, filter the Open folder to conversations with no reply, or use the Unassigned / Waiting on us views if your workspace has them. For the trend, Reports → Conversations → First response time and any first-response SLA report show how often replies missed target. Intercom’s live inbox does not always surface a single “breaching first reply” count, which is exactly what this card isolates. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Office-hours clock. The SLA timer pauses outside your configured office hours; if Intercom and the Vortex IQ profile disagree on office hours, counts differ. | Variable | Confirm office-hours settings match. |
| What counts as a reply. Bot/operator auto-messages and internal notes do not stop the clock here; some Intercom views may treat an auto-message as activity. | Vortex IQ higher | Check whether an auto-reply is masking a true first reply. |
| SLA target value. The card uses your configured first-response target; an Intercom report set to a different target will count different breaches. | Variable | Align the SLA target. |
| Snoozed conversations. Snoozed conversations are excluded; a snoozed-but-unanswered item will not appear here. | Vortex IQ lower | Check the Snoozed Conversations card. |