IT - Service Desk Plus

IT Service Desk SLA

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract between Service Providers or between Service Providers and Customers that specifies, usually in measurable terms, what services the Service Provider will furnish and what penalties the Service Provider will pay if he cannot meet the committed goals. The SLA will drive Service Provider differentiation during the exploitation (contributing to this customers trust) in terms of managed reliability and monitoring capabilities.

SLA Matrices for different Priority Incidents

Below are the three metrics used to determine the order in which incidents are processed:
1. Impact - The effect on business that an incident has.
2. Urgency - The extent to which the incident's resolution can bear delay.
3. Priority - How quickly the service desk should address the incident.

Priority of incidents should be made dependent on Impact and Urgency. Priority is generated from Urgency and Impact.

Below table shows the priority of incident tickets when Impact & Urgency varies from High to Low

Based on the above criteria we have prepared the SLA compliance report which we have met in last four quarters of a financial year (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) for ‘Incident’ tickets and ‘Change’ records.

P1 – Priority 1 incident tickets (Critical)

P2 – Priority 2 incident tickets (High)

P3 – Priority 3 incident tickets (Moderate)

P4 – Priority 4 incident tickets (Low) SLA success rate is given as percentage.

IT Service Desk - SLA response

Request via Phone call

Response Target : 80% Answered in 60 seconds

Request via Online Chat

Response Target : TBD

Request via IT Help desk

Response Target : 80% Answered in 24 Hrs

Request via Email

Response Target : 80% Answered in 24 Hrs

The SLA defines the following service delivery terms

Response Time:

The time within which the assigned technician needs to respond to the ticket. In this case, the assinged technician needs to respond to Mark's ticket within time slot from the time of ticket creation.

Resolution Time:

The time within which the workstation has to be delivered. In our example, the tickets need to be resolved within time slot from the time of ticket creation.

Escalations:

Actions and notifications that will be triggered if response or resolution times are breached. Based on the SLA that is associated with the employee onboarding template, we see that a few escalations and actions have been set up that take place in the events of an SLA violation. The first escalation is set up to alert the ticket owner that the ticket has not beed responded to, it is set up to automatically notify the ticket owner 30 mintes before the response SLA is breached. The other escalations are for breach of the resolution SLA. The first-level escalation is again set up to alert the ticket owner one day before the resolution deadline. The second-level escalation is set up to flag the ticket owner's reporting manager and place the ticket in a special technician group that works on high-priority user management tickets to resolve the ticket in the shortest possible time.

And finally, after the request is closed, a custom survey is sent to collect Mark's feedback to ensure the SLA is satisfactory and working the way it was designed.

Service Level Agreement - Incident

Service Level Agreement - Service Request

Escalations:

First Level

First level escalations are notification automatically shared to IT department (it@yellow.ai)

Escalations:

Second Level

Second level escalation notifications are automatically shared to IT Head (gaffoor@yellow.ai)

SLA management roles and responsibilities

Now let's look at who is in charge of SLA management, and the responsibilities of the various stakeholders.

Service level manager (process owner): The service level manager is accountable for the entire SLM process. They ensure the process is effective and that the right stakeholders are involved during the process. They also have final say on the level of service for each service item.
Service owner: Service owners are responsible for delivering services within the agreed service levels. They usually lead internal support groups.
Support groups: These are groups of specialized technicians who deliver services within the agreed service levels.
Technicians: A technician is a support agent who delivers services within agreed service levels.
End users: An end user is a consumer of services.

Regular SLA Performance Monitor - IT Department

The IT department is regularly monitor to gauge the performance of the IT service desk and identify if SLAs are effective. The IT service desk's environment is constantly changing and evaluating SLAs helps understand the adjustments that need to be done to keep SLAs relevant and effective. IT department can monitor SLAs using dashboards and get detailed metrics using reports. Some important metrics to keep track of are first call to resolution, defect rate, average time to respond, turnaround time, and mean time to recover.

SLAs can be a powerful aid in making your IT service desk more efficient by helping prioritize tickets and carefully allocating the required resources to resolve tickets on time. SLAs also define service delivery standards and help you manage requesters' expectations better. Adopt SLAs to take your service delivery to the next level and ensure no requester is left frustrated with delayed services.

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