Improving Customer Satisfaction by Implementing a Service Level Agreement (SLA)
An SLA is a type of service management system that establishes a two-way accountability for service, which is negotiated and mutually agreed upon. It is really a contract that documents operational and interpersonal relationships, establishes mutual expectations, and provides a standard to measure performance. Organizations that have such systems in place achieve higher customer and employee satisfaction ratings.
This free white paper explains how to get started in creating an SLA and pitfalls to avoid. The most common pitfall is creating SLAs that are too complex. If your SLA is more than 5 pages long, you are doing it wrong. Also, your SLA service level objectives must be realistic. You cannot write an effective SLA without knowing what your current performance measures are.
The following is the table of contents for the white paper:
Introduction
a) Purpose of the SLA
b) Mission of IT (This is not just between the Support Center and customers)
c) Customers covered under the SLA
d) Locations
e) Owner of the SLA document and communications path
f) Services covered. This is only a high level statement.
2) Service Goal
a) Overall goal
b) Specific goals
3) Definition of terms
4) Service delivery elements
a) Service coverage times
b) Environment(s) included
c) Environments excluded
d) Specific applications and network services coverage
e) Methods for requesting service
f) Customer responsibilities
g) Service tracking and reporting procedures
5) Escalation procedures
6) Telephone, Web and Email response times
7) First contact resolution by the Support Center
8) Reporting methods
a) Weekly management reports on the Web
b) Monthly performance metrics on the Web
c) Quarterly Customer Satisfaction Surveys results on the Web
9) SLA contract period
a) When the current draft is effective
b) When it will be reviewed
c) How to request changes
10) Examples of cases by severity level and case type
11) Sample of the customer satisfaction survey questions
See https://www.givainc.com/wp/it-help-desk-software-cloud-whitepapers.cfm to access white paper.