Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Support Team Leader Role in SLA & OLA




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.


 Now let's learn about Priority. In the Service Level Agreement segment we understood what is the Service Level Agreement & and why the Service Level Management process is followed by Team Leader to meet the Service Level commitment. One of the most important attributes of Service Level The agreement is its defined level of Priority in alignment with the Response time. The Priority is always decided based upon the urgency & impact of the issue reported. It depends upon company to company in defining case priorities which sets an expectation to both Customers and Support Agents. It actually describes how the case should be handled and in which order.


 In the Service Level Agreement the Service Response time as a component always exist and it measures the time between ticket creation and the first response sent by the Customer Support Department.


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. 















Get our Frontline Leadership book to obtain more knowledge about Support Team Leader

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1 comment:

  1. Thanks a lot it really helps....What a valuable information.

    ReplyDelete

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