Service Level Agreements and What to Report to Your Customers
Your customers are likely to wish to know how well your company is performing against your service level agreements (SLAs). Even if they don’t request this information, providing it frequently proves your professionalism and can be a valuable way of proving you are doing an effective job of managing their IT systems.
So, what is the crucial information to provide when reporting on your service level agreements?
1. System Uptime
System uptime usually forms part of service level agreements and is generally displayed as a percentage.
If customers have experienced any recent downtime, it will probably be fresh in their memory. Few realize that 99% uptime allows for over 3.5 days of downtime each year. It therefore does no harm to constantly remind customers that they are in fact experiencing an uptime percentage in excess of 99%!
The best way to provide accurate uptime data is to use some kind of uptime monitoring software to report on service level agreements, rather than trying to calculate this all manually.
2. Call Resolution Times
No single user at any of your client sites is likely to have an overall view of how quickly you resolve problems. Reporting on call resolution times under their service level agreements gives you an opportunity to show them.
Make sure you tell them the total number of calls you have handled, and the average time to resolve them. Ensure that everything is logged, or you will sell yourself short when reporting this information.
3. Exceptions
Inevitably, there will be times when things go wrong. Perhaps unforeseen circumstances will affect the uptime percentage, or a particularly stubborn problem will increase the average call resolution time.
Ensure that you address these situations in detail when you report on service level agreements. This will give you an opportunity to explain any problems, defend yourself, and show that you take your SLA obligations seriously.
How do you report on service level agreements? Share your processes in the comments box below.
And to follow-through on the tips introduced in this short article, be sure to download your free special report on IT Service Contract Secrets for Getting More Repeat Clients and Recurring Service Revenue.
Creative Commons Image Source: flickr alexbartok