Managing Expectations and

SLA
IT Expectation Failure
 Strategic Failure
 Not obvious

 Tactical and Operational Failure

 Obvious
Managing Expectations
 Business level expectation of IT

 IT professional expectations

 Customer expectation
 Internal and External
 IT is a SERVICE ORGANIZATION
4 Key Elements of Good Customer Service

KEY CUSTOMERS

Identify KEY CUSTOMERS

KEY SERVICES

Identify KEY SERVICES of KEY CUSTOMERS

KEY PROCESSES

Identify KEY PROCESSES that support KEY SERVICES

KEY SUPPLIERS

Identify KEY SUPPLIERS that support KEY PROCESSES

 Top 4 Customer Service Mistakes
1. Presuming your customers are satisfied because
they are not complaining.

2. Presuming that you have no customers

3. Measuring only what you want to measure to

determine customer satisfaction

4. Presuming that written SLAs will solve problems,

prevent disputes, and ensure great customer
service.
 SLA
 SLA are the foundation of series of management
processes that can collectively be called disciplines.

 The goal of the disciplined approach is to establish

performance measurement against specific criteria.

 Procedures
 Tools
 People

 Govern IT operations
 Internally
 Externally
 SLA
 Need for SLA
 To reduce conflicts between the suppliers and
users of service

 To help establish reasonable users’ expectation

 Help IT organizations operate its services

business in a more revealing manner

 Help to compare competitive suppliers with

internal IT organizations
 SLA
 Negotiating of SLA
 IT involves various stakeholders
 Service providers
 Customers
 Business managers

 To establish agreement on
 Cost
 Means of tracking and reporting progress and
problem
 Conflict resolution
 SLA
 Nature of SLA
 Iterative because business is dynamic

 IT requirements changes

 New technological adoptions

 Other external and internal factors

 SLA is assumed to be complete, documenting all the

services the client expects along with the costs of the
service

 Document should expressed in understandable terms

 SLA
 What Service Level Includes
 Date the agreement was established
 Duration
 Renegotiation date
 Describe key service measures
 Reporting structure
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
M
Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Between:
1. Name the
IT Help Desk
_______________ Marketing
and ______________
Parties

For:
2. Define the time Jan 1, 2004
______________ Dec 31, 2004
through ____________
period
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Services to be provided by the IT Help Desk:

3. Services to be Provide first, second and third-level support for
provided standard software applications and hardware.

Log and track all customer calls.

Conduct quarterly customer satisfaction surveys

to rotating client base (100 at a time).

Conduct customer callbacks to 50% of

customers daily.
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Hours of Operation (Central Time):

4. Hours that services Regular Business Hours:
are provided 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Monday through Friday
(non-holiday)

After-hours support via pager

7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Monday through Friday
(non-holiday)
24 hours Saturday and Sunday
24 hours holidays
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Service Access
Telephone: 312/555-1500
5. Service Access E-Mail: Ehelp@sample.com
Pager: 312-555-0220
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Customer Responsibilities:
6. Customer Use only specified telephone numbers, email, and
Responsibilities pager to request support.

Each customer must attend two half-day LAN and PC

training sessions before receiving a workstation.

Each customer must attend the specified training

session on each software package used.

Each customer must read and accept in writing the

Corporate Security Policy and Corporate computer
Usage policy.
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Call Priorities and Response Times

7. Call Priorities and Priority Impact Response Resolution
1 Critical Component down 15 min As required
Response Times 2 Critical Component degraded 45 min 4 hours
3 Non-critical component 4 hours 8 hours
4 Other request, question 8 hours 12 hours
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Service Measures
8. Service Measures By the Help Desk
First-Level call resolution: 85%
Average Call answer time: 90% in 30 sec or
less
Percentage of calls reopened within two weeks:
2% or less.

By the Customer
Percentage of training-type calls: 10% or less
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Escalation Procedures
9. Escalation Level Escalate when Call Phone/Pager
1 Agreed response Help Desk Manager 312/555-1234
Procedures time not met 312/555-0050

2 No response 2 Director, Operations 312/555-1255

hours after Level 312/555-0077
1 escalation

3 No response 3 V.P. Operations 312/555-1233

hours after Level 312/555-0010
3 escalation
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement
Reporting

Weekly Reporting
10. Reporting Distribution:
Manager, Marketing
Procedures V.P. Operations
Content:
• Number of Calls
• Call Breakdown by percentage for training-type calls, hardware,
network, service requests, abandoned calls
• Percentage of first-level call resolution
• Average call answer time
• Percentage of calls reopened within two weeks
• Percentage of calls meeting agreed-upon response times for each
priority
• Percentage of calls meeting agreed-up resolution times for each
priority
• Results of callbacks to customers to check work quality. Show
number of call backs as a percentage of total calls.
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement
Reporting

Quarterly Reporting
10. Reporting Distribution:
Manager, Marketing
Procedures V.P. Operations
Content:
• Results of Customer surveys
• Change from previous quarter in number of customers supported
• Operating costs

Note: All weekly reporting must show the current week compared to three
previous weeks. All Quarterly reporting must show current quarter
compared to previous quarter.
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Systems and Components Supported

11. Systems and Critical Systems/Components
Components Price flow system
Supported Catalog system
LAN segment 6
All PCs on segment 6

Non-Critical Systems/Components
Marketing Search, Competitor System and all
desktop systems.
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
P LE
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Support Fees
Costs will be allocated at the rate of $75 per user
12. Support Fees per month.

Pay-for Fees
Training for standard desktop software is
13. Pay for Fees available and will be arranged by the Help
Desk for the cost of $350 per half day.
Course dates and times are available via the
Help Desk Intranet website.
 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
(SLAs)
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Contents: SA
Service Level Agreement

Signatures:
14. Signatures _______________________________________
Manager, Help Desk

_______________________________________
Manager, Operations

_______________________________________
Manager, Marketing

_______________________________________
V.P. Marketing
 OPERATIONS/HELP DESK – MANAGING THE “FACTORY”

WHAT DO USERS’ WANT?

- RELIABILITY

- ADAPTABILITY

- COST: BENEFIT RATION (LOW COST-HIGH BENEFIT)

Data Center
 Severity One (Urgent)
A severity one (1) issue is a catastrophic production problem which may
severely impact the client's production systems, or in which client's production systems
are down or not functioning; loss of production data and no procedural work around
exists.

Severity Two (High)

A severity two (2) issue is a problem where the client's system is functioning but in a severely
reduced capacity. The situation is causing significant impact to portions of the client's business
operations and productivity. The system is exposed to potential loss or interruption of service.

Severity Three (Normal)

A severity three (3) issue is a medium-to-low impact problem which involves partial non-critical
functionality loss. One which impairs some operations but allows the client to continue to
function. This may be a minor issue with limited loss or no loss of functionality or impact to the
client's operation and issues in which there is an easy circumvention or avoidance by the end
user. This includes documentation errors.

Severity Four (Low)

A severity four (4) issue is for a general usage question or recommendation for a future product
enhancement or modification. There is no impact on the quality, performance or functionality of
the product.
Levels of Support and Escalation

• Level I
– First contact with user/customer
– Limited scope (common problems)
– Limited time
‣ If not resolved within specified time,
documents information and escalates to
next level

• Level II
– Receives problems from Level I
– Handles more complex problem requiring greater expertise.

• Level III
– Handles non-standard issues

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/135/bbsm_techspprt.html
http://www.questinc.com/hss_service_agreement.html