IT Employment

Ask something
Discussion Locked

The Perfect Service Level Agreement

0 helpful
4 replies

by halle

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

What is a Service level agreement? Why is it so important? How can you create a perfect service level agreement? How can you save a company by creating a highly effective SLA?

There are a lot of questions that can be asked when it comes to putting together a SLA. There are many companies who have produced an effective performance measurement to help with the changes in technology. But has a SLA really helped out?

4 replies

by sheilau

We are in the process of building SLAs, for the primary purpose of providing customers with a reasonable expectation of when issues will be resolved. When a customer reports a "minor" issue (keyboard not working) and we are currently involved in a high severity issue (network is down), they need to have an expectation of when we will get to them. If we clearly state in a "contract" (SLA) what we promise to do, they tend to be far more reasonable and understanding. We've found if we give thema time when they will at least hear back from us, they are less angry about any unexpected delays.

by james r linn

Service Level Agreements are valuable tools at building credibility and trust with your customers.

I've written a number, both for internal and external customers.

There is no perfect one -they should be tailored to the situation.

But they should explain the service provided, the terms of service and how to resolve problems(escalations and conflict resolution) in a clear unambiguous and concise manner. I find tables are good.

If your aim is to improve customer relations, you need todo the follow up which is to track your actual performance against your SLA. Your customers will hear horror stories about your service and leap to conclusions. By tracking your performance against the SLA and publishing it, you can counter that effect, and show some progress.

James

by sheilau

In the Help Desk field, finding valid measurables for customer service can sometimes be a challenge. Using SLAs and customer service surveys (measuring performance against SLA from the customer's point of view) has been very valuable for us, and given us a much better feel for how we're doing. First call resolution, how fast we answer and how few we lose may be traditional statistics, but for us it's more valuable to know how well we did in the customer's eyes, based on their expectations of us. SLAs help us do that.

This discussion is closed to new replies.