SLA: build bridges, not walls

The Russian outsourcing market has reached the stage of its development at which clients are ready to outsource any non-core business processes (IT, personnel records, accounting and legal support, staffing, etc.). The development of the market spurs competition, which forces service providers to pay increased attention to the quality of service. And although in recent years business has grown noticeably in terms of methodological preparation and understands what SLA and KPI are without additional explanations, unfortunately many providers and their clients are still too superficial about the service level agreement. Of course, SLA can also be used within the company (between divisions), but today we consider it only as a tool for quality management and evaluation of the services provided by an outsourcing provider.

In practice, one often comes across both multi-page SLA at zero service and the reverse situation. Such examples gave rise to the opinion that SLA is a kind of wall that the provider needs in order to isolate itself from the hoteles and customer complaints. Although such agreements, by contrast, appeared to serve as a bridge between the customer and the service provider.

The essence of SLA is, instead of clerical phrases in the style of “properly rendered service”, to fix in the most measurable way - what, to whom and in what time frame will be done. Fixation occurs in the form of rules for determining a set of indicators and criteria for their evaluation. This allows you to determine the responsibility for the failure of the executor of the expected level of service and bring transparency to the relationship, thereby simplifying the quality control of services.
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For our company, the implementation of SLA is not a formal obligation, dictated by the requirements of certificates. A deliberate choice from Intercomp as a provider. We have defined a corporate standard for quality service provision and then developed a service level agreement based on it.

Not just a contract

Thanks to the agreement, both parties (the customer and the provider) are moving to a single conceptual level regarding the quality of services. In addition, the performer receives clear algorithms for solving specific problems. When is it important to fix this or that problem? How to determine the priority of eliminating several simultaneous faults? Due to the formalization of indicators, SLA makes the quality of service measurable and transparent, makes it possible to increase the probability of identifying problems, increase the speed of response to them and the speed of their elimination.

In Russia, for some reason, many people have missed the point that, for a provider, the strategic benefit of implementing an SLA should be to increase the loyalty of key customers. This tool allows you to evaluate your services from the point of view of consumers at least due to the attentive attitude to complaints and suggestions. Ideally, you need to tailor all your internal business processes to the aspirations of customers. After all, price and product policy competitors are relatively easy to copy, but a deep understanding of customer needs is a unique and difficult to reproduce factor in improving competitiveness.

In this case, it is very important that in the race for the cherished 99.99% agreement did not form excessive expectations. World experience shows that you should not use good-sounding “marketing” promises - in the long run, it is better to “under-promise” than “re-promise”. In other words, a stable, reputable provider will not allow himself cheap “marketing” moves. For example, in the company Datto (the most profitable US IT startup recently named by Forbes magazine), the actual response time for a ticket marked “urgent” is about 5 minutes , although all client documents have a response within an hour. And this is not an exception, but a fairly common practice - research shows that most Western service providers use SLA to form correct expectations of the level of service and increase user loyalty.

For the client, SLA is the path to maximum transparency and clarity in monitoring and assessing the quality of services consumed. It provides an opportunity to reduce the risks of financial losses caused by the provider and to receive compensation in case of non-compliance of the service with the level guaranteed in the agreement.

Az, Buki, Lead, Verb, Welcome ...

When developing an SLA, it is worth making efforts to clarify customer needs. The fact is that many can not themselves accurately assess exactly what level of service they need. By showing the possibilities of regulating the cost of business processes depending on their characteristics, you will help the customer to determine the best option for him in terms of price / quality ratio. Do not forget that a well-written document should also provide for the most "painless" way out of cooperation. This significantly reduces the fears of customers to become dependent on the unsuccessful solution and can be a decisive factor when choosing a provider.

In order to ensure the maximum level of performance of the SLA, it is necessary to establish a relationship with the balanced scorecard of the company. When introducing KPIs that are tied to specific clauses of the agreement, the employee understands that in order to increase his performance indicators (read, wages), he must provide the clients with the specified level of service.

The choice of KPI and criteria for their evaluation depends on the specific service. The common point is that the set of indicators should not be too large (they are not in vain called key), and the criteria themselves should be clear, not blurred. Choose easily measurable parameters. If possible, they should be evaluated automatically, although this is highly dependent on the type of service and perhaps not in all cases.

How about us?

For example, as part of our Intercomp Direct service, we assess the quality of our employees' work in three groups of indicators: payroll accounting, personnel records (preparation of personnel documents), preparation and submission of regulated reporting. Each group is evaluated in terms of time and quality. The time indicator is assessed as timely / untimely, that is, performed in due time or with violation. The quality indicator is evaluated by the criterion correctness: with errors / without errors.

Here is the formula for calculating one of the indicators: “Percentage of settlement sheets executed without errors”


Managers of service divisions carry out operational control in manual mode, then the completed SLA forms are sent to customers for approval. Additionally, there is a quality hotline to which any client can report their problems or wishes.

The order of our further actions depends on the values ​​of the obtained indicators. If the level of service is lower than expected, then the amount of the invoice for the service is reduced and an action plan is developed to eliminate the shortcomings. Penalties may be applied to performers. If the service is held at the highest level, they will receive a bonus.

Naturally, the proper level of service is achieved not only by fines and staff incentives. These are rather additional incentives. In order for the SLA to be respected, all internal processes are lined up so that each specialist of the Intercomp operations center has the opportunity to comply with the obligations assumed by the company. There is a need for operational control of team leaders to ensure timeliness and accuracy. Employees who have found errors in their work receive internal advice from the methodologist and (if available) are sent to relevant professional courses to deepen their knowledge in this area.

If, as a result of operational control, a risk of deviation from the established quality indicators is identified or such a deviation can occur “after the fact”, information about this is immediately entered into an automated system for managing risks and discrepancies within the framework of the existing quality management system, which allows for promptly taking all necessary measures to eliminate and to prevent further such deviations.

Customer focus - the basis of the formation of loyalty

For any company providing b2b services, periodic failures or errors are inevitable. And the goal of SLA implementation should not be to never commit them and certainly not to shield one from claims. It is very important that your specialists are ready to listen, hear and constructively perceive the needs of clients. This approach allows us to provide a really high level of service, constantly maintaining a stable quality of services even in cases of significant changes in the market situation, legislation or other external conditions.