Service level management
Service level: One or many indicators which define quality of expected or delivered services.
These main activities are subjected in this practice:
- Creating a shared view of services and their targeted service levels between the organization and users.
- Ensuring that the organization reaches its defined service level targets by collecting, analyzing, maintaining, and reporting related metrics.
- Checking services continuously to ensure that current services fulfill the requirements of the organization and its customers.
- Check and report service-related issues including their performance according to defined metrics.
- Performing relationship management, business collaboration, business analysis, supplier management to achieve the targets.
Service level agreement (SLA)
Service level agreement is an agreement between the service provider and customer which indicates the required services and agreed service level.
SLA’s have been used for a long time as a measuring tool for service performance by customers’ view. There could be many challenges by using them because they don’t cover the whole service performance and also complete users’ experience.
Some key point in working with SLAs are listed below:
- They should be related to a service defined in the service catalog in order to be meaningful and have a goal.
- They should be related to a defined outcome, not only operational metrics. This could be achieved by using a comprehending compound of individual metrics.
- They should be based on agreements with key stakeholders.
- They should be simple and understandable written.
Watermelon effect
In most situations, one-dimensioned indicators lead to a lack of coordination and ignorance of some stakeholders’ satisfaction. Legacy SLAs were based on separated activities like “review time”, “service availability percentage” and “number of fulfilled requests” and they didn’t consider meaningful business approaches. For example, a high percentage of fulfilled requests versus not resolving critical business problems -which are included in a low percentage of unresolved requests- aims to low customer satisfaction. This effect is called the “watermelon effect” because the watermelon is seen green from the outside but it is actually red inside.
To ensure that this practice focuses on customers’ needs, problems, and concerns, there should be an engagement to realize the customers’ real needs, and its very important that they could trust the organization. This understanding will be achieved by listening to customers and being engaged with them. That leads to constructive relations between the service provider and its customers.
Service level agreements should be based on engagement and listening to customers and key stakeholders. The key activities to provide successful SLA are:
- Customer engagement that includes some questions like:
- What is your job?
- How technology helps you?
- What and who are the key time, place, people, and activities of your business?
- How you distinguish a bad or a good day?
- Which activities are more important than others?
- What are the goals for this year?
- What is your metric for success?
- How and on what basis you assess the service and technology?
- How can we help you more?
- Customer feedback is received by different formal and informal sources using these methods:
- Surveys raised after completing the incident requests or are provided periodically to customers.
- Key business measurements by metrics agreed between the service provider and customer based on values that are important for a customer. They could be a set of SLAs or a distinctive business activity like sales transaction, project completion, or operational activity.
- Operational metrics that are based on different operation activities and might include system availability, response time, resolving time, change review, ….
- Business metrics that could be based on any business activity which considered valuable by customers or success in service.
Figure 5.34