SLAs - Scope, Purpose, Understanding, and Setting up - Zoho Desk | Online Help

SLAs - Scope, Purpose, Understanding, and Setting up

Service-level agreements (SLAs) are a critical component in any contract that is signed between the service provides and the customer or external supplier. They define the type and quality of service that a business provider agrees to give its customers. They clearly state the responsibilities and expectations of both parties, so that, in the event of issues, neither party can plead ignorance. They also provide remedial solutions when the requirements are unmet. 

For example, a telecom company's SLA may promise resolution within 24-hours in case of network unavailability to its Gold Plan customers. If this is not achieved, the credits can be carried forward to the next cycle. The credit cycle and carry forward details can be defined in the Support plan.

SLAs help maintain transparency, set proper expectations, and allow you to modify the agreement to align with the business's ever-evolving objectives and client engagement strategies. 


Importance of service-level agreements in business

  1. Better alignment of service delivery and customer expectations. SLAs allow the service provider and the customers to agree upon the type of service that will be provided. They help to find the right balance between the service delivery and support parameters.
  2. Prioritization. SLAs define what needs quick attention and faster resolution.
  3. Standardized support delivery. The business can ensure the approach that will be taken in delivering a service and that it is followed across the organization. This reduces slippages and inadvertent operational errors.
  4. Improved customer happiness. SLAs will list down how quickly critical issues will be resolved and the type of support that will be provided for non-critical issues to ensure quick resolution. Adhering to the predefined timelines will improve customer satisfaction.
  5. Upgrading and improving service parameters. Analyzing service performance data will help identify improvement opportunities, accommodate changes to services in the SLA, and revise SLA targets to better deliver against business needs and expectations.

Types of SLAs

SLAs can be broadly classified into two types, depending on:
  1. The kind of service that will be provided to the customer. These are listed in the service-level agreement (SLAs). Common examples include implementation services, incidence management, or support ticket management.
  2. The actions different teams will take in order to maintain performance and deliver the service that is agreed upon. These are referred to as operational-level agreement (OLAs). OLAs are particularly useful in larger organizations where the teams are interdependent in delivering the service. Some examples include compliance management, upgrade in fault detection system, or network management guidelines. 

Best practices for creating robust SLAs

Building a robust Service Level Management (SLM) system is essential for businesses to ensure the services remain aligned with customer needs. SLM is a continuous process that should be revisited regularly to monitor the delivery performance. Organizations can evaluate whether the services meet or exceed customer expectations by adhering to these principles:
  1. Clearly define the services the business will provide the customer and at what level 
  2. Measure and periodically monitor actual service levels   
  3. Continuously improve the service levels
  4. Manage service levels through SLAs (SLA management)   
  5. Communicating service levels to customers

Business scenarios for SLAs and OLAs

Managing resolution time for product-level issues

Issues filed during QA audits can be classified as critical, bug fixes, performance or scalability based, which requires timely action from both the development and product teams. SLAs can define the committed timeline that each team should take to address these issues. Escalations before the due date to a senior developer and product manager will ensure the fixes take place within the stipulated timeline. Streamlining development and implementation operations will enable the organization to adhere to the promised deadline to the customers.

Streamlining incidence communication

A major issue in the server leads to a high-priority incidence that impacts all users across the data centers. The business needs to communicate about the downtime crisis promptly to the affected data centers with a list of applications that are impacted, and the ETA. Using SLAs, the business can create an incidence communication plan that will bring together all the involved teams and facilitate quick communication to resolve the source incident. The high-priority L4 incident will send out immediate notification to the key representatives within the org, with a stipulated time of resolution as two hours. 
The SLA will ensure that the clients in the affected DCs are communicated about the impact within 10 minutes of  occurrence.

Asset tracking, distribution, and inventory management

By setting SLAs for different asset requests, organizations can manage inventory, stockroom allocation, and proper distribution of assets across departments. A due date for software installation, hardware purchase, license upgrade, or machine allocation to new employees can help the IT department manage increasing demands efficiently without further adding staff. Timely allocation will help them check the asset availability and restock the inventory ahead of time to prevent violations. 
Let's say the SLA for license upgrade is two business days. The IT manager can perform a monthly review to find the number of violations and the reason for violations. SLA violation due to stock unavailability can be prevented by taking proactive measures to raise purchase requests and get the approvals for a timely purchase.

Better customer management through proper ticket triage

Customers can be grouped based on the number of licenses they purchase, the industry they belong to, the service, or product they use. This will allow businesses to classify their requirements into high-priority, urgent, critical, service-type, industry type, etc.
Businesses can create SLAs for each of these category and define the response and resolution time. This will help them manage ticket triage, prioritize the tickets as per the SLA criteria , and most importantly identify the requests that are not effectively managed by the existing SLA and revise the targets to meet customer expectations. 
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Understanding SLAs in Zoho Desk

SLAs can be standalone or associated with Support Plan and Contracts, depending on the business structure. SLAs can be created to manage response and resolution of specific tickets based on various conditions, such as the severity, service needed, product, and so on. In such cases, once a ticket enters the system and satisfies the SLA criteria, it will be applied to the ticket automatically. Smaller businesses or start-ups can particularly benefit from non-contractual SLAs.
On the other hand, large organizations that have multiple touchpoints and business units prefer a contractual mode of support services. This allows them to set a specific timeline until which the predefined services are provided to their customers. In such cases, the SLAs are associated with Support Plans and subsequently with the Contract to ensure they work in tandem. 

Creating SLAs

SLAs can be created by administrators. Before creating SLAs, below are some important points that you should know:
Info
Points to remember
  1. SLAs are department specific.
  2. They are applicable only for the Tickets module.
  3. SLAs can be standalone, that is applicable to all accounts or associated with specific accounts.
  4. SLAs can be associated with contracts via support plans.
  5. Whenever the ticket is updated or created, the automations will be applied in the following order: Direct assignment rules > workflow rules > SLA > Round robin rule (sequential > load balancing > skill based) > Blueprint > Notifications
Setting up SLAs consists of the following steps:
SLAs are department specific, therefore before creating you must select the department to which the SLA will be applicable. 

Choose when to execute

The SLA will be executed on the ticket when the condition is satisfied. The available options are upon:
  1. Ticket creation - The SLA will apply to all the tickets as soon as they are created from any channel.
  2. Ticket update - Whenever a field is edited or modified in the ticket.
  3. Field update - Whenever a particular field, e.g., priority, status or category is updated to the defined value.
  4. Customer reply - Whenever the customer replies to the ticket.
  5. Agent response - When the agent replies to the ticket.
  6. Private thread - When a private response is sent or received in the ticket.
  7. Comment - When a comment is added to the ticket. It includes public, private, and customer comments.
Notes
Note:
If multiple options are selected, the SLA will reset for each update. Only the required option must be selected to trigger the SLA. 
For example, the Ticket Update is a generic option that gets updated often, resulting in reset of the SLA frequently. Whereas, the Priority Change is a specific field that gets updated only when the ticket priority is updated. 
Selecting a specific field will reset the SLA only for important updates allowing to manage the response and resolution time efficiently. 

Execution on association with Account

In some situations, the service provider can decide to execute the SLA only when the ticket is associated with an account.
Let's say the business receives a large volume of tickets during an outage. For better ticket handling, it can only apply the SLA to those tickets that are associated with an account. This will ensure the issue is resolved and communicated to the concerned customers within the stipulated time. The remaining tickets can be handled by a different team that resolves and responds to the customers accordingly. This will allow effective load management and prevent violations.

Calculate response and resolution time from ticket created time

This option ensures that the SLA considers a ticket's created time instead of its modified time to compute the response and resolution times.

Define SLA Targets

The SLA target let's you set the following parameters:
  1. Response time - The time within which the agent should respond to the ticket as soon as the SLA is executed. For example, respond within one hour of receiving customer reply. You can only apply this rule to the first response. In other words, the agent will reply to the customer within one hour only if it is the first response (after SLA execution). The subsequent responses will not adhere to this limit. If the option is disabled, then the response time will apply to all the replies.
  2. Resolution time - The time until which the ticket must be resolved and closed. You can choose in hours, days, or minutes.
Notes
Note:
  1. The ticket will be considered closed only when the default field "Ticket status" is marked as "Closed".
  2. When an SLA is applied, the response and the resolution times are reset, regardless of any prior SLA activities. Any response sent after the SLA is triggered will be considered as the first response time. 
  1. Operational hours - The operational hours can be calendar or business hours. Business hours will ensure the SLA skips the holidays and non-working days, as defined in the Business Hours. Choosing business hours will allow the service provider to adhere to the committed timeline. The SLA execution and the escalations will be calculated as per the BH.
  1. Escalations - If the response or resolution time violates the SLA or is close to the due time, then you can escalate it to the superiors or the agent. Select the users who would be notified, and at what time frame. You can choose to be notified before, on, or after the resolution time.
  2. Agent notification template - An email notification is sent to the selected users when the SLA is violated. You can select one of the "Escalation email templates" to send the alert.
  3. Actions on Escalation - Upon escalation, the ticket can be reassigned to another agent and the priority level of the ticket can be changed. In this step, you can select the agent and also define the priority level upon escalation.
Notes
Note:
  1. A maximum of 10 targets can be added to an SLA.
  2. A maximum of two response and four resolution escalations can be configured. Each level of escalation can have its set of actions.
To create SLAs
  1. Navigate to Setup () > Automation > SLA (Escalate).
  2. Click New SLA.
  3. In Create SLA page, enter the SLA Name and Description.
  4. Under When do do you want to execute the SLA?, select an option (ticket create, customer reply, ticket update, private thread, etc.).
    1. If you choose Customer Reply, select Incoming or Outgoing Responses.
    2. If you choose Comment, select Agent comment (Private/Public) or Customer Comment.
  5. Toggle Execute only when associated with an Account, if required.
  6. Toggle Calculate response and resolution time for ticket created time, if required.
    Note that this option will not be displayed if you choose execution on Ticket Creation.
  7. Click Next.
  8. Click Add Targets.
  9. Under Select conditions for this Target, select fields and a corresponding value to set a criteria.
    Click the + icon to add more conditions.
  10. Under Set the response and resolution time, enter a value for Respond and Resolve within and select Minutes, Hours, or Days.
  11. In Operational hours, select Calendar Hours or Business Hour from the drop-down.
    All the business hours created in the Desk account will be listed here.
  12. Toggle Response Escalation, in Level 1 escalation, do the following:
    1. Select When to escalate: On time, Before, or After.
    2. Under Whom to escalate, select the listed roles/ticket owner/contacts/etc. and the corresponding users in it. You can select more than one user.
    3. Select an Agent Notification Template from the drop-down.
    4. Under Actions on Escalation, select an Agent as the new Ticket Owner.
    5. Set the priority of the ticket to high, medium, or low.
  13. Click Add Level 2 escalation, if required, and repeat Step 12 (a to e).
  14. Toggle Resolution Escalation and follow Step 12 (a to e). 
  15. Click Save

Associating SLAs to Account

As mentioned before, SLAs can be associated with an Account in two ways:
  1. Direct association with an Account.
  2. Indirect association via support plans and contracts. When a contract is created and associated with an Account, the Support plan and the SLA mapped with it is automatically associated with the Account. 
To associate an SLA with Account
  1. Go to the Customers module.
  2. Click the Accounts tab in the bottom-left corner.
  3. In the Accounts Home page, select an account to view its details.
  4. In the Accounts Details page, click the SLA & Contract icon ( ) from the floating widgets on the left of the screen.
  5. Under the SLA & Contract Information section, click New SLA/Contract.
  6. Select the SLA from the drop-down menu.
  7. Click Save.

Deactivating or deleting SLAs

SLAs that are not required by the organization anymore can be deleted or disabled as needed.

To deactivate or delete an SLA
  1. In the SLAs list view, hover on the desired SLA and click the Deactivate ( ) or Delete icons ().
  2. Click Ok to confirm.


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