April 2002 Meeting Recap

Service Level Agreements by Steve Dreyer of SMA Management Systems April 24, 2002 Help Desk Institute Dinner Meeting. There were 36 people in attendance at this meeting. - by Kimberlee Rizzitano What is a Service Level Agreement (SLA)? It identifies what services are provided, as well as what the responsibility is for both parties involved in the agreement. This can be a simple understanding between the service provider and the receiver of the service, or it can be a formal contract which may have penalties (financial or otherwise) associated with it. Why is a Service Level Agreement important? It can do many things, from helping to identify requirements or training for your help desk or help determine staffing levels. Without a Service Level Agreement in place, your customers will ASSUME that your department and staff can help them with whatever the problem is or the request they have. This may be true in some cases and very false in other areas where you cannot help the customer not matter what they are requesting. For example, if you have a customer asking for a mainframe or scheduling change for their job and it is not your department’s responsibility, then the customer (who expects you to do it, since it’s your job) has no idea that it is NOT your job and you won’t do the change. It is important to keep in mind that less than 1/3 of organizations measure and know the cost of providing support. Service Level Agreements help you in determining the costs associated with support and help you to give that information to management in facts and data collected. This helps with your desk side, phone support, email support, or web support to customers. The Components of an SLA: · Identify parties involved (internal and external customers) · Services to be provided (including definitions) · Escalation Policies and Priorities (Include type of service as well as VIP’s in this. It is critical for the internal staff to know what your customer base is and the priorities on people and types of service. This will can improve or break your customer service levels if one of you staff “didn’t know” that was a priority.) · Hours of availability and staffing you have (if a customer needs after hours support, then work towards a mutual goal of what will work for you and them for their priorities) · What will be measured (metrics – TIME is the universal SLA metrics. When will a server be up or how long will it take to return a call from voice mail, or how long before my email is responded to are all critical to be documented.) · Procedures (every SLA process should be documented for clarity on both sides, how long for a call to be returned, can customers view their call for status, can customers help themselves via knowledge-bases or history databases, etc.) · Tools used (There are many tools used at a help desk. Call tracking systems, knowledge management systems, web access, eSupport, asset tracking - all are available tools) · How this will be reported · Penalties for not meeting the Service Level Agreement If you cannot meet your SLA? You need to look at your staffing levels, re-evaluating your commitment to internal and external customers and staff, or perhaps to have additional training provided to your staff to adequately help customer base and SLA’s that have been set up. Final Steps in SLA process… Once you have determined all areas of the SLA, you need to draft up the document. Determine the objectives of the SLA, document what can be delivered, get agreement from customers, implement tools, monitor performance and make adjustments, and react to out-of compliance conditions. Questions and Answers: Question: How do you get agreement from Internal Customers? Answer: List things in call tracking software where your department and staff spend their time. Here is what we have as a list of priorities. As the customer if this is what they need, discuss with them what you have for corporate and department responsibilities and let them know what your limitations are. Let THEM tell YOU what is important to their department. You may think having Word up-to-date is critical but the department may say that they require the latest upgrades in Access (for example). This will help you meet your customer needs and find where your internal customers greatest needs are so you can train and hire towards meeting those needs. Question: How to you find the internal customers to ask them their needs? Answer: You go to the customer’s management, the department heads and call a meeting or focus group. This will enable them to understand what you have for support personnel as well as become a tool to help evaluate their needs and determine what is important to the decision makers in the organization. Question: Do you allow customers to set the priority? Answer: It is important to let the customer know what your have for priorities based on the business needs of the organization. But also letting the customer have a say in what is important in their priorities and levels is also important. The customer may say everything they do is a top priority, but you can rope them back in with specific questions relating to what your business needs are (globally) and what their needs are (departmentally)… Many times the customer is not aware of the number of servers or applications you are maintaining. Educating the customer in these meetings is key to getting their buy in to Service Level Agreements and to understand the response time criteria. Once the customer has a better understanding for what you do, support and what you are willing to do for their specific area, the more likely they will buy into the SLA concept. HDI-NE Home Page Underwritten by GroupSoft Systems, Inc. HDI-NE Chapter is solely responsible for the content of this site.