Technical support software and service level agreement (sla).
The concept of service level
agreements (SLAs) has received a lot of attention in the last decade. This was
in part driven by the need to monitor the performance of IT service providers
in outsourcing transactions. If you spend thousands, millions, or billions of
dollars on someone else to manage your IT, you need to measure performance. The
metrics used to develop SLAs can range from individual problem resolution time
details to overall performance and availability of specific IT functions such
as email. The help desk service are important to SLAs in two ways.
a) As a source of information on
IT performance and problem solving
b) A means to manage the problem
or problem in the most effective way possible to minimize the impact on the
service and the monitored service parameters.
With a clear understanding of
value that can help monitor the value of outsourced service providers, SLAs are
increasingly being adopted to help direct and monitor the performance of
internal IT. SLA was developed to monitor the provisioning of core functions
(as mentioned in the email above), but to measure the success of one of the
most visible elements of IT, the user help desk.
IT Help Desk Client And Problem Segmentation
SLAs can be deepened to any level
of granularity, and a well thought-out SLA scheme must take into account the
business impact of the activity being monitored. Not all IT features are of
equal importance, and the importance of any feature may vary by month or
quarter. Access to the CRM system is always very important, but billing for the
second week of the month may be less susceptible to a few hours of interruption
than 30 days. Similarly, the potential business impact of downtime is greater
for some users than others. The loss of VP Sales VoIP connectivity during the
main negotiations may require commercial prioritization over the buyer looking
for the cheapest clip.
A good SLA architecture allows an
organization to create an array of problem categories and user categories and
assign SLA levels to all cells within that matrix. Gold, silver and bronze are
commonly cited examples, but they can also be nickel, tin or lead if there is
no adequate architecture to classify the event.
IT Help Desk Issue SLA Controlled Scaling
Most IT helpdesks have a scale
mechanism based on a combination of events and time triggers. The parameters
used to control this process must be linked to the service level where the
problem is handled. This will ensure that the correct resources work. If a VP
Sales VoIP connection is lost (above), it should be diagnosed within seconds or
minutes. This may involve routing the problem to a technical specialist, and
you may encounter an active problem until the VP's VoIP session is restored, or
at least until diagnostics show you how to fix the problem.The problem is
that escalations and SLA levels must be associated with each problem handled.
IT HelpDesk SLA & Troubleshooting Report
All of the help desk solutions
today provide some SLA reports. It generally contains the percentage of problems
set within the parameters for each level of gold, silver and bronze. When
defining an SLA for a complete feature, such as email, the task of keeping the
SLA up and running does not generally involve the help desk directly. The
helpdesk may receive a phone call indicating that a problem has occurred, but
resolution of the problem will be delegated to a group of experts who will be
responsible for measuring and reporting performance based on the email SLA.
If the problem is handled solely
by the help desk, performance against the SLA is the responsibility of the help
desk. Having a clear record of how a problem has been handled is very helpful
to all parties. This is where Vector HelpDesk works particularly well,
combining actions, call logs, and email threads in chronological order into a
single issue audit trail.
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