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You are probably somewhat familiar with the concept of a “service-level agreement”, which give you some idea of what kind of response you can expect from a service organization.  For call centers/customer service organizations, service level agreements are really a “must have”.  However, if you are the manager of a department in an organization – ANY department, and ANY organization – you too have customers; even if they are internal customers – and you should look into creating a “service-level agreement” for them. 

For the uninitiated, a “service-level agreement” (or SLA) is a set of expectations that are published by an organization to help their customers understand how and when they can expect to receive help.  For example, a call center might guarantee its customers that when they call in for assistance, they can expect to get their call answered within 5 minutes.  If the call is not answered in 5 minutes, your SLA might state that they can expect to be able to leave a message and get their call returned within one hour.  The SLA usually also sets out clearly what the method is for escalation if this SLA is not met.  A strong SLA gives your customers comfort in knowing that, during times when they need you the most, they know ahead of time what to expect and can plan their own business accordingly.

As I mentioned earlier, every department in an organization ought to adopt and publish an SLA.  The most important reason for this is that proactively producing and publishing an SLA gives you the opportunity to set the expectations of your own customers, which means YOU get to help define what “good” is!  For example, if you work in the contracts department of a software firm, your “customers” are the company’s account executives who need you to draft/approve contracts for their prospective new clients.  People are going to have different ideas of how soon your department ought to be turning these contracts around and will become disgruntled with you if you don’t meet their expectations.  However – if you proactively issue an SLA which outlines what they can expect (and it is a reasonable timeframe based on past history,then you have effectively “set the bar” for how good can be defined.  With no SLA in place, a 48-hour turnaround on a contract might be unacceptable.  However, with an SLA in place that states that clients can expect a contract request to be completed and returned within 3 business days, then if you actually produce it in 48 hours, you are now “early”!  You gotta love that…

Other things to keep in mind when drafting and implementing an SLA in your department:

1.  Make sure you are clear on what criteria the client needs to complete in order to be compliant with the SLA.  For example, is there a specific form you require that they turn in as a request?  Are their certain “must have” fields in that form that, if not filled out, can delay the process?  Make sure you are clear about what these are so that there are no surprises.

2.  Outline what your team will do if the SLA cannot be met.  For example, if you have a 48-hour turnaround in your SLA and your team can tell within 24 hours they won’t meet it, they might offer as part of the SLA to call the “client”, let them know immediately, and then proactively contact the client once a day until the project is completed. 

3.  What happens if the SLA isn’t met and the proper responses are not forthcoming from the team?  What are the next steps the client can take to “complain” and get it resolved?  This is called “escalation”, and all good SLA documents should contain an escalation path for your client.  This escalation path should contain all of the names of managers for that department who have the authority to get involved and make something happen if need be. 

4.  You will want to be clear about how requests will be classified.  You need to leave room in your SLA for emergencies, which need to be treated differently than just normal requests.  However, everything CAN’T be an emergency, and your team needs to define up-front into which category a request will fall, so that there are no surprises for your clients on the back-end.  Here is an example of how you might manage your classifications:

• A “regular” contract request – defined by needing a contract produced for a potential prospective client.  The turnaround time for a “regular” request is 3 business days.
• An “expedited” contract request – defined by needing a contract produced for a potential prospective client who is on the verge of signing a contract with a competitor.  The turnaround time for an “expedited” request is 2 business days.
• A “911” contract request – this is defined on a case-by-case situation and must be approved by department manager.  The turnaround time for a “911” request is immediate.

5.  You will want to provide clarity on hours/days – if you say that your turnaround time is 2 days, clarify what that means so that there are no misunderstandings.  Does that mean 2 business days?  What constitutes a business day?  What is someone turns in their request at 3:00 pm on Friday afternoon – when does their 2 days end in that situation?  If you’ve said 8 hours, how is that calculated?

6.  You will definitely want to begin tracking statistics and publishing them – this is a very important component of a good SLA program.  You will want to be able to establish trust with your clients and prove to them that you are actually hitting the deadlines you’ve put into place for yourself.  Publishing these statistics, and being able to demonstrate that you are meeting – or EXCEEDING – your published response times is a terrific way to further establish trust between your clients and your department.

Robert Frost wrote in his poem “Mending Wall” that “good fences make good neighbors”.  Never has that been more true than with a service-level agreement!  How can you brag that you went “above and beyond” for a client if the client doesn’t even know where your “fence” ends, and his “fence” begins?  Take the time to put into place the necessary up-front steps to define your fences for everyone involved, and YOUR team will reap the rewards in the end!

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