Support Team Leader Role in SLA (Service Level Agreement)
Let us first understand what is a Service Level
Agreement? It is an agreement between a company
and its customer. It talks about the written commitment which the Company
promises the customer to be delivered in the form of services. It has a legal
obligation if not to meet either side. The
company prepares detailed Service Level Agreement about the kind of service
which will be provided to the Customer this are the Pricing, Features & the
Service targets for Supporting their customer service requests. Now meeting the
Service target for Supporting the Customer service request is the Accountability
of the Customer Support Department and to drive that Service Level Management
process the Team Leader plays a very important Role.
Example of Service Level Targets for Customer Support
Team Department.
Basic Support Service Level Agreement Components:
Service Scope: In
the Service Level Agreement the Service Scope is documented i.e whether Email,
Chat or Phone support will be provided to the customer.
Service Availability: In
the Service Level Agreement the Service Availability is documented i.e whether
a 24 x 7 or 9 x 7 Support availability will be provided to the customer.
Service Response: In
the Service Level Agreement the Service Response time is documented i.e Email
Response time, Chat Response Time & Phone Response time commitment which
will be provided to the customer.
The Service Level Agreement for each Customer is
communicated to the Customer Support Department and they have to ensure that
they meet the Service Level Agreement commitment
so that Business goals can be achieved.
The responsibilities of the support center team lead in
the Service Level Management process is to ensure that the support center department
is meeting the defined parameters of the service level agreement. They have to ensure that
Customer Support Agent on the shifts are managed properly particularly their
Schedule Management so that SLA can be achieved. If they find any Operational
Challenges which is impacting the Service Level Management achievement then
must communicate it to Customer Support Manager so that they can take
appropriate measures which will help the overall Department to achieve the
Service Level Agreement.
Below is the sample of Priority Bifurcation keeping SLA
Response Time & Resolution Time commitment which is documented in Service Level
Agreement. As a Team Leader, your Accountability is to drive the Priority as per
the SLA commitment.
Support Team Leader Role in OLA (Operating Level Agreement)
1. Setup within the Support Team to achieve the
Support Service Level Goals:
As
the Customer Support Department has an SLA Response Time commitment with the
End users, therefore in order to ensure that they always successfully achieve
the Goal the Support Leadership Team establishes Operating level Response time.
If you see the below table you will find that Support Leadership Team has kept
a 50% buffer on SLA Response Time and have established OLA Response time, so
that they can successfully achieve the SLA. Leadership Team at Manager and at
Director level always configure the OLA as a SLA in Service Management system,
so that Support Agents & the Team Leaders always strives to achieve the
Goal as set in the Service Management system which helps the Leadership Team to
meet their commitment to Business. Now as a Team Leader it is your
Responsibility to drive the OLA so that SLA is successfully achieved.
1. Setup with Other departments to achieve the
Resolution Goal in which Support Department doesn’t have resolution control:
In this Category Support Team Setup
Operating Level Agreement with Other departments in which they don’t have a
resolution control. (Example: A Customer Reported a Product error which could
only be fixed by the Product Team because they have the Skill Expertise, therefore
such cases will be escalated to Product Team and there will always be a
Resolution Operating Level Goal which is assigned to the Product Team, so that
they can meet the Resolution within the given Operational Level period, so that
Resolution timeline set in the Service Level Agreement can be successfully
achieved.
Take a look at the below table there
is an SLA Resolution Time commitment for each priority committed to the End
users & to achieve that the OLA Resolution Time is defined and documented
between Product Team, so that they can resolve the case within the OLA
Resolution time, so that SLA can be achieved. In this instance also Business
Team setup’s ups at least a 50% OLA buffer to meet the SLA commitment.
As a Support Team Leader, it is
your responsibility to ensure that the Operational Level Agreement is driven under
your Supervision.
Thanks a lot it really helps....What a valuable information.
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