When it comes to customer service and IT support, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are essential for ensuring high-quality customer service and maintaining contracts between in-house teams, customers, and service providers.
As call center and IT help desk managers, your ability to maintain high SLA scores can significantly impact both customer satisfaction and the efficient running of contact center or IT operations.
SLA scores are a metric-driven way of measuring team performance and whether contractually-agreed or expected service standards are being maintained. For example, if an IT team and software vendor are contractually obliged to ensure 99.99% uptime, and this drops to 70%, causing serious unexpected outages, then they'd be failing the SLA.
In this article, we go into detail about how to calculate and improve SLA scores, exploring real-world examples, and discovering effective strategies to enhance those scores.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are formal commitments outlining the service quality your customers can expect.
In a B2B scenario, such as an IT help desk or service desk, whether in-house or through an external vendor, an SLA forms an essential component of the business contract between both parties. If an IT help desk or software vendor consistently falls below SLA standards, then that can be grounds for contractual termination.
In a B2C environment, customers who call or live chat agents at a contact center haven't entered into an SLA agreement. Most wouldn't know or care about SLA scores. However, they care that their calls are answered quickly, and that they receive a resolution to their problem. Therefore, SLAs and customer service/CX managers monitoring SLA scores and identifying how to optimize them are mission-critical for the organization.
SLAs encompass numerous service elements, from response times to resolution strategies, tailored to meet the unique needs of call centers and IT help desks. In essence, SLAs form the backbone of customer-centric operations, ensuring that expectations are clearly laid out and achieved.
Behind every successful service delivery, whether in contact centers or help desks, lies a clear understanding of how to calculate SLA scores. Managers and senior leaders need to be clear on this so that expectations are set and met accordingly.
Before we dive into the SLA calculation, let's stress the importance of having clear targets and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and other metrics of success, such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) or Net Promoter Scores (NPS).
On a basic level, SLA scores are calculated the following way (using telephony, Live Chat, or IT support ticket response times as an example):
Service Level Agreement (SLA) % achieved = ________%
Calculate as follows:
(No. Of calls/tickets answered within XX seconds or handled under FCR / Total number of calls/tickets inbound) x 100
Example:
(# of calls/tickets answered within XX seconds or handled under FCR
Total number of calls/tickets inbound)
This SLA percentage score serves as an indicator of your team's performance, ensuring SLA standards and KPIs have been met and are guiding continuous service improvement actions.
Now, let's look at SLA scores in action, how to deal with considerations such as abandoned calls, and ways to improve an SLA score.
Imagine a bustling call center striving to resolve customer issues promptly. SLA scores are a high-level overview of other KPIs and metrics that impact the customer experience and operational practices.
Let's consider an IT help desk Tier 2 scenario where an SLA dictates a response time of 20 seconds and a resolution time of 4 hours. A customer sends in a mid-level complex support ticket with a high level of urgency, so it's automatically filtered to a Tier 2 agent. The IT support agent promptly responds within 20 seconds – hitting the response SLA. Subsequently, the agent diligently resolves the issue in just 2 hours instead of the allocated 4 hours. This successful interaction contributes positively to the SLA score, and this would count as being within SLA standards.
Now, if the agent had responded in 40 seconds and only managed to resolve it in 10 working hours, then it would fall outside of SLA standards and count as an SLA score fail.
In the pursuit of exceptional service level formula scores and customer service, addressing whether to include abandoned calls is more than an academic exercise.
Abandoned calls, when customers hang up before their calls get through, can detrimentally affect your SLA scores and KPIs. Abandoned calls fall into two categories: When a call hangs up quickly because they've either found a self-serve solution, or a Live Chat ticket has been answered while waiting to get through, or they've realized they've dialed the wrong number. Let's assume this happens within the first 5 seconds, then, most SLA scores don't count these. Depending on the technology your call center uses to route calls through, these may not even register even if a call connects.
However, the other type of abandoned call is when a customer is waiting between 20 and 60 seconds for a response and then gives up. These abandoned calls do count directly towards SLA scores. To mitigate these issues, consider implementing strategies such as offering callback options, optimizing call routing algorithms, and minimizing wait times. By embracing these solutions, you'll ensure that even if a customer can't get through, they will get a timely response and resolution, thereby improving SLA scores.
Industry benchmarks serve as navigational beacons in the vast sea of customer service and IT KPIs. These benchmarks offer insights into what's attainable against peers in your sector, helping you set realistic SLA targets. For example, for most contact centers, the current Average Handling Time (AHT) for calls is 6 minutes, according to Live Agent. AHT might be higher in your sector if customer problems are more difficult to solve.
Utilizing benchmarks empowers you to gauge your performance against industry peers and make informed decisions to enhance your operational efficiency and customer experience.
Now, let's look at four ways IT or contact center managers can improve SLA scores.
Here are four ways to improve SLA scores, starting with one of the most crucial: response times:
