SLA Management

What is an SLA?

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) defines guaranteed response and resolution times for customer issues. SLAs ensure accountability, prioritize urgent cases, and trigger escalations for missed deadlines.

SLA Tiers

Tier 1: Critical Issues (Severity 1)

• Definition: Complete service outage affecting multiple customers
• Response Time: 15 minutes
• Resolution Time: 4 hours
• Example: Network tower down, 1,000+ customers affected

Tier 2: High Priority (Severity 2)

• Definition: Significant service degradation, individual customer outage
• Response Time: 1 hour
• Resolution Time: 8 hours (same business day)
• Example: Enterprise customer's internet down

Tier 3: Medium Priority (Severity 3)

• Definition: Service works but with limitations
• Response Time: 4 hours
• Resolution Time: 24 hours (next business day)
• Example: Slow speeds, intermittent connectivity

Tier 4: Low Priority (Severity 4)

• Definition: Questions, requests, non-urgent issues
• Response Time: 24 hours
• Resolution Time: 5 business days
• Example: Billing question, feature request

SLA Monitoring

SLA Escalations

Automatic Escalation Rules

• 50% of SLA time elapsed: Alert agent's manager
• 75% of SLA time elapsed: Auto-assign to senior tech
• 90% of SLA time elapsed: Page on-call engineering team
• 100% (SLA breached): Notify VP of Service, executive intervention

Escalation Example

• 10:00 AM: Sev-2 SR created (8-hour SLA = 6:00 PM deadline)
• 2:00 PM: 50% time elapsed → Manager notified
• 4:00 PM: 75% elapsed → Escalated to Tier 3 tech
• 5:30 PM: 90% elapsed → Engineering paged
• 5:45 PM: Issue resolved (15 min before SLA breach)

SLA by Customer Tier

Enterprise Customers

• Sev-1: 15 min response, 2 hours resolution
• Sev-2: 30 min response, 4 hours resolution
• Dedicated Support: Named account team, 24/7 phone line

Standard Customers

• Sev-1: 1 hour response, 8 hours resolution
• Sev-2: 4 hours response, 24 hours resolution
• Support Hours: 8 AM - 8 PM Mon-Fri

Budget Customers

• All Issues: 24-48 hours response, email-only support
• No SLA Guarantees: Best-effort service

SLA Metrics

• SLA Compliance Rate: (SLAs met / Total SRs)× 100% → Target: 95%+
• Average Response Time: Time from SR creation to first agent action
• Average Resolution Time: Time from SR creation to closure
• Escalation Rate: % of SRs escalated → Target: < 10%

Example: Missed SLA Analysis