Companies use Service Level Agreements (SLA) to tailor their services for their customers. For example, a company could give customers a choice of more or less immediate service with a choice of say Gold, Silver or Bronze levels of support. Here, depending on the SLA chosen, customers get more or less coverage, shorter or longer response times, with service requests resolved more or less quickly.
Specifically, a Service Level Agreement, or SLA, is an agreement between a service provider and a customer that determines the initial response and completion due time and date for the resolution of issues.
What happens then in SAP Service Cloud Version 2, is that SLAs created in the system get assigned to Cases as Cases are created according to an evaluation process of the following steps:
The system then starts counting down the key dates of the assigned SLA for a Case (due date, next response date, and completion date).
Using rules for SLA determination you can, for example, have the system select an SLA based on where a Case is coming from. A Case from Germany can use a German holiday calendar-based SLA, while one coming from the U.S. a U.S. holiday calendar-based SLA.
These rules are also used for the system to check and monitor Service Level Objectives (SLOs). SLOs are specific measurable characteristics within an SLA agreed with a customer, such as availability, throughput, frequency, response time, or quality. All together, the SLA and its constituent SLOs specify what service is to be provided to a specific customer, how this service is to be supported, and associated times, locations, costs, performance, and responsibilities of both the parties involved. Against the SLAs, you can then measure the actual performance and the quality of your customer service.
The Service Levels can be configured in SAP Service Cloud Version 2 by administrators in the following path: Settings → Case Management → Service Levels.
SLAs can be defined and rules can be set for SLA determination, based on which key dates are calculated in the Case object. There are many other determinations that happen in the Case based on various attributes (for example service technician based on organization, or work distribution rules, or from the account, or installed base), including the following:
The Service Level Determination can be configured in SAP Service Cloud Version 2 by administrators in the following path: Settings → Case Management → Service Level Determination.
After the creation of a new Case, the system determines the Service Levels specifically required to solve that issue based on the attributes that have been set up in the determination rules by the Administrator. Service Agents can look at the important milestones of the Case that they are working on in the Case Details facet where the following are visible:
Service Agents can take some actions to control the reaction times of a Case, for example: