At times, an agent might need tickets for his/her own reference.
Such a ticket can be created by clicking on New ticket icon from the Menu bar. The SLA timers would still be ticking on such tickets.
As a workaround, the agent can send in an email ticket (send an email to the support email address) and then reply or can add a public note to the same ticket from Freshdesk, this way the First response SLA would not be violated.