# Service-level management ## ServiceDesk Plus’ Glossary of terms ### What is service-level management? Service-level management (SLM) is the discipline through which a business defines, maintains, and manages agreed-upon performance and availability levels for its services. These service levels are usually documented through a written agreement, formally known as a service-level agreement (SLA). They are instituted to ensure high-quality experiences for employees and end users. ### What does service-level management entail? Service-level management involves managing your service-level agreements, with clearly stipulated response and resolution times. This helps ensure consistency in IT service delivery by verifying whether the agreed upon service levels are met, across the breadth and width of your IT services. ### How does service-level management work? SLM involves clear definition of your service desk’s performance levels, availability levels, business impact, RACI matrix for the service, the levels of escalation configured, stakeholders associated with the escalation and more. This helps identify the scope for improvement of service design, helping improve efficiency, prevent breach of SLAs, and drive end-user satisfaction. ### What are the benefits of service-level management? This practice sets clear business-based targets for service performance, balancing end-user expectations, known as service-level requirements (SLRs), and the deliverable quality of service the service provider or business can promise. ### Why should you manage your service levels, and what is their importance? Practicing SLM helps temper expectations, and bridge them with your service delivery capabilities. It helps establish consistency, transparency and accountability in IT service delivery, preventing multiple checkups from end users. ### How does ServiceDesk Plus empower service desk teams to improve their service-level management? ManageEngine’s AI-driven unified service management platform, ServiceDesk Plus, makes SLM easy for your service desk teams, with no-code automations built in for SLAs, escalations based on response and resolution times, and scheduled reporting on SLA metrics. With support for proactive and reactive auto-escalation, including timer-based post escalation actions, you can automate your SLAs from the moment the ticket is logged, all the way until the ticket is resolved. ## FAQs ### What is a service-level agreement? A SLA is a legally binding contract between the service provider and a client, which establishes the agreed-upon service levels for first response and resolution times for a particular IT service. ### What is the difference between service-level management and a service-level agreement? SLAs are contracts used to establish and formalize service levels for a particular service, while SLM involves the definition, management, and escalations of all services under your purview. SLAs are a key component of SLM. ### What are common challenges in service-level management? Rigid and linear escalation paths can lead to SLAs becoming obsolete as your business goals and environment change. There might be a significant difference between your SLAs and experience-level agreements (XLAs), also known as the watermelon effect. The watermelon effect describes service delivery that looks green on SLA compliance but red on user experience, that is, the metrics are met on paper while employees feel the service is subpar. ### What are operational-level agreements and underpinning contracts in service-level management? An operational-level agreement (OLA) is an internal agreement between teams within a service provider, to help ensure SLAs are met. An underpinning contract is an agreement between a service provider and external supplier, whose performance affects the service delivery of the service provider to a client. ### What metrics are used to measure service-level management performance? - **SLA compliance rate:** The percentage of incidents and requests resolved within the stipulated time. - **Average first response time:** The time taken from creation of your ticket to the first technician response. - **Mean time to resolve:** The mean time between incident logging to resolution is known as MTTR. - **Breach rate:** The percentage of SLAs in breach of the stipulated response and/or resolution deadlines. ### How does service-level management improve service desk efficiency in ServiceDesk Plus? ServiceDesk Plus makes SLM easier by supporting ticket prioritization through auto-assignment, SLA-linked business rules, giving technicians clear guidance on which tickets need attention first, and reducing the cognitive load of manual triage. ### What are the best practices for service-level management? Shifting from a one-size-fits-all approach to SLAs can help layer your service levels and deliverables. Implement multi-level escalation architectures, ensuring that your backup plans have backup plans to prevent SLA breach. Establish OLAs to help improve accountability. ### What service-level management features are available in ServiceDesk Plus? ServiceDesk Plus can help you manage service levels across sites, regions, and time zones. This solution provides multi-tiered proactive and reactive escalation to prevent SLA breach, automated notifications in case of escalation, condition-based SLA automations, and site-based SLA management built in out of the box. ServiceDesk Plus also factors in operational hours and local holidays into your SLAs, helping to ensure a better digital experience for users and customers. ### What is a service-level requirement? A SLR is an expectation an end user brings to the table, when negotiating upon your service-level agreement.