Service level management is a guarantee of the successful delivery of services. It has been a practice for businesses to develop and maintain Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with their partners and customers for a long time. SLAs help manage customer expectations and ensure that delivery standards are met.
A typical SLA describes the parties involved, the nature of the service rendered, quality and performance metrics for the services, clauses on termination, and how service issues need to be addressed.
SLAs, in short, establish the exact nature and quality of service in line with predetermined standards for service provided and such standards will be measured. SLAs make the communication between enterprises and their client transparent and efficient. It gets rid of ambiguity between client expectations and understanding of the service provider. This reduces the possibility of a dispute over services delivered. It also offers remedial mechanisms if needed.
SLAs standardize the processes for the service provider and use a carefully documented agreement to align client requirements with the organization’s operations.
ServiceNow CSM is exclusively meant to meet, manage, and if possible, exceed ever-changing customer expectations. SLAs work to organize and expedite customer tasks handled by customer service agents and other teams.
ServiceNow CSM is a comprehensive solution that helps manage customer service, performance, and compliance.
When a customer raises a request, it is quickly assigned to the relevant resource/team and the SLA equips them with all the tools and information to resolve the issue efficiently. It unites customer service, support operations, and other teams that need to intervene together on a single platform. This, thereby, extends real-time visibility into the health and operational status of customer-facing products and services. Slowly it helps the customer service function to evolve proactively to pre-empt issues and resolve them.
ServiceNow CSM also helps manage service level agreements and ensures streamlined performance by combining a powerful suite of automated workflows and customer care management tools.
SLAs in ServiceNow help establish contractual responsibilities in the customer contract. It makes it binding to provide services within a specified time. The support team utilizes Incident Management or Service Request Fulfilment to measure response time and resolution time.
- An in-depth understanding of SLAs helps the organization manage and monitor SLA objectives and ServiceNow’s capabilities enable users to create, monitor, and report on SLA metrics. It also generates alerts when services fall below-defined levels.
- ServiceNow CSM enables to plan and track SLAs with the help of a clear framework of expectations and responsibilities between departments while providing visibility and accountability for SLA compliance. Users can define SLAs in terms of performance metrics, such as uptime, response time, and availability. It ensures actions are compliant with the agreed-upon SLA targets.
- ServiceNow CSM can help set up automated alerts when SLAs are met, approaching, or have been exceeded thus, compliance issues can be quickly identified and addressed. The platform can also be used to track service levels against individual SLAs and across multiple services.
- ServiceNow enables organizations to understand how different types of users interact with services and identify any areas that may require more attention or resources. Additionally, analytics can identify weak spots in the SLA that may need to be tweaked to ensure ongoing compliance.
- Post establishing ongoing/changed criteria in an SLA, ServiceNow CSM monitors and tracks progress towards SLA compliance by generating automated alerts when criteria are not met or by creating reports to track SLA compliance over time. Self-service processes can also be initiated to help customers to report SLA violations. Enterprises can schedule regular reviews of SLAs along with protocols. This will help to maintain SLA compliance.
SLA values stored in the contract can seamlessly be transferred to ServiceNow where they get defined in an intuitive way. The configuration of relevant records allows users to easily monitor SLA status from the record level. Defining SLA elements in ServiceNow depend on the terms of the contract signed with the customer and these details are critical in determining values satisfying for both parties to the contract. Definitions are built as per ticket/priority type. Configuration options include naming, building start/stop/pause/reset/workflow, and determining duration values in the chosen schedule.
SLA definitions in the application reflect and adapt to customer needs and demands. Responses time varies from the creation of the ticket to the start/stop of the initial analysis and includes status changes and new comment addition. Resolution time terminates when the ticket is closed.
Understanding the ideas of Service Level Management and Service Level Agreements and their structure can help enterprises to deliver on their commitments. Gemini Consulting & Services can help enterprises to create SLAs in ServiceNow to manage service solutions and ensure effective communication between the enterprises and customers to meet business requirements. Contact us to understand how SLAs in ServiceNow can drive customer satisfaction.
Measuring the effectiveness of SLA involves the proper implementation of relevant reports for team leaders on the supplier side, resources and customers. Let us remember that the stakeholders who need the reports may have different business requirements. But the ultimate goal is always to provide high-quality solutions, in a timely manner. SLA records on individual tickets are stored in the task table and this works as the basis for generating reports.
Get started with understanding reports that allow every stakeholder to identify inconsistencies and problems. SLAs in ServiceNow are expected to be intuitive and easy to use.
The regular tracking of the SLA:
- Will help avoid breaches
- Prevent payment of penalties
- Enhance customer satisfaction
For customers
- Tickets are updated on a regular basis and end-users can track work progress.
- Resolution times are monitored, and hence critical issues are quickly handled.
- Work continuity and focus.
- The process is followed, and tickets are handled as per a specific order of priority.
For Team Leaders and Suppliers
- Easy identification of issues in teams, such as overloaded staff/absence of knowledge transfers/communication. This helps with improvements in processes.
- Building a transparent relationship with the clients and providing them with quick solutions.
- Faster updates on tickets raised.
For Other Stakeholders
- Work prioritization that results in better time management.
- Prioritising tickets that demand quick response with the potential to impact overall performance.
