What Is Service Level Management?
The purpose of the service level management stage is to evaluate the goals and expectations of a business properly. The outcomes of this process will be used to help IT professionals within the company become successful. The IT department and the business as a whole must sign off on an agreement to help solidify what their individual duties will entail. This is where ITIL courses can come in handy. These courses can be conducted online, and they help students understand how crucial service level management is during the ITIL process. The ITIL learning process will combine service design, service improvement, and foundation-building tips to help professionals be successful in the space.
In this article, we will explore the ins and outs of the service-level management processes, along with how it contributes to the IT success of a business.
What Are The Objectives and Goals of Service Level Management?
The goal of conducting proper service level management is to ensure that the IT department has agreed on the services they will provide.
For example, we will consider a deposit and a mobile banking app. This is a crucial action for customers, as they can transfer money into their accounts and start earning interest. Not only that, but they will not have to visit their local bank and can conduct the entire process from their phones. For this particular service, the IT department needs to be available 24 seven in order to assist customers if something goes wrong. If this is not possible, customers might choose a different organization to do business with, where they can get adequate customer service. Businesses should allocate resources as a result of the recommendations made by service-level managers.
If a local news network fails to live stream results on election night, this can be cause for frustration. As a result, the business might lose customers while also missing out on advantages such as trust in the industry. If the organization has a proper IT department, these individuals will be able to troubleshoot and deliver the expected product or service to customers.
Another focal point to consider in this process, is promising that the current team can achieve future goals. If this is not possible, it might be time to expand the IT department or hire new individuals all together.
For example, if a news operator is hoping to implement email marketing in order to acquire new users, the IT department will need to be involved. Before implementing this marketing push, the IT department will need everything required to make the launch successful.
What Does Success Look Like?
The service level management process aims to help define agreements, monitor success, report on progress, and fulfill promised IT requirements.
Service level management processes are also used to help support new initiatives within an organization. Typically, new projects will need more resources than project managers had originally accounted for. So, this process helps to successfully get the job done by eliminating less important resources from already ongoing projects. This way, proper organizational hygiene is also implemented, as old projects are revisited and updated to align with current company goals.
In this process, SMART goals are used. This acronym stands for smart, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Specific goals must be put in place for all IT managers, as some products might work differently from Customer to Customer. For example, customer service can offer a few different touch points for a banking app where money must be deposited. For example, they can offer phone service, email support, or a live chat option. As a result, customers who use the live voice service over the chat option might have differing opinions on the quality of support they received.
Without SMART goals in place, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of these benchmarks. So, this process ensures that the IT department has agreed to all success metrics.
Service level management process:
Objectives-
- Define, document, agree, monitor, measure, report, and review a level of IT services provided
- Ensure that specific and measurable targets are developed for all IT services
- Monitor and improve customer satisfaction
- Implementing proactive measures to improve the levels of services
This process also focuses on measuring customer satisfaction as a whole. When a customer is satisfied, this creates overall value for the business. For customers to return and continue using products and services, they must know that they can rely on the support of an organization’s IT department when needed. If this is not attainable, customers will likely seek services from a competitor.
Initiating proactive improvement plans is also a key function of this process. Success metrics should increase month over month so that goals and targets are consistently updated.
New targets should be formulated every time a metric is hit. This way, you are encouraging your employees to be hungry for growth, resulting in a boost in overall company performance.
It’s no secret that service level management is crucial to the overall success of an organization. Without it, customers would not be receiving top-tier service. As a result, customers will trust the organizations they buy from, knowing that if they are in need of support, it is just a phone call or a click away.
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