Ticket statuses show both agents and customers where the ticket is in its lifecycle. Though helpdesks have all the default statuses that make up a ticket’s lifecycle (Open, Pending, Resolved and Closed), some industries might necessitate a status in between one of the default states. For example, an e-commerce company’s support team might include statuses like 'Refund Approved' and 'Refund Initiated' between Open and Resolved, rather than the catch-all 'Pending' state.
Different industries have different processes of handling tickets and custom statuses enables that. And for every custom status, the SLA timer can be turned on or off. For example, support agents cannot really control the refund process after it has been initiated. So instead of penalizing them when the refund process is delayed, SLA timer can be set to off for a “refund initiated” status.