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A great first step is to develop a service catalogue. The catalogue is a written statement of IT services, their default service levels and any options that attach to the services. Many IT organizations, when first attempting this task, are often surprised at the wide variety of services, service levels and option that exist. Developing the service catalogue presents a great opportunity for the IT organization to rationalize, standardize and consolidate the service provides. This can significantly reduce the management and support overheads the organization has.
The next step in implementation is to identify which customers use what services. When this is done a Service Level agreement (SLA) structure can be created. SLA agreements can be service based, where a standard agreement is developed for each service provided and customers can select which services they want,
or customer based, where you have a single agreement with each customer that includes all of the services they use. 
Agreement can also be multi-tiered, which is a combination. The key is to decide what service should be standard across all customers and what services should be tailored to meet the specific needs of each customer. For ease of management, the Help Desk or Support component of any service Levels should be common across all customers, although some customers or services may attract a premium level of service, this should be exception based. Typically, business specific applications may attract varying service level in terms of transaction response times, throughput, hours of service etc. However, where possible, it would be preferred if applications could be grouped into services types or tiers.
There are several key questions that need to be answered when planning for service level management. - What service do we provide?
- Who are our customers and what services does each customer use?
- What are the key elements or what elements of each service should be measured?
- How will I measure these things?
- What is my current level of service for each service?
- Do I have contracts or OLA’s in place for each element of the service to be delivered?
- Do the performance tagets in the contracts or OLA’s support the service levels I am required to deliver to my customer?
when each of these questions has been answered and any rectification activities performed you are ready to begin implementing service level management.
An SLA is a formal negotiated document that defines in quantitative terms the service being offered to a customer. The agreement should encompass all service elements that make up the service being provided, for example, an application service would be made up of elements such as the service desks response and restoration targets, application performance, network performance, end to end availability of the service and perhaps some output based service components.Any metrics included in an SLA must be capable of being measured on a regular and consistent basis. Without this, service achievement will always remain subjective.SLAs should be renegotiated whenever a business service is subject to significant change in regards to the business requirements or the service delivery capability of the IT organization.
Service level management should encompass all IT services provided by the IT Organization. The service Level manager should ensure that all services have appropriate Operation Level Agreements (OLAs) with internal IT Suppliers and contracts with external suppliers in place to underpin the services delivered.
An important initial task is to distinguish between services, functions and processes. This is not an easy task; however, the following definitions are a good place to start. Services are what the IT organization’s customers consume directly and are typically business related. A function is a set of processes and activities performed to deliver a service and a process is a way or means of performing activities or tasks. A help desk or service desk is a tricky example. An IT Help Desk in a bank is not a service it is a function provided to deliver a service. The banking application is the service. However, if this Help Desk was outsourced then the Help Desk function provided by the supplier is also the service it provides. In both cases, Incident Management is the process followed to deliver the service or function.
So, careful thought must be given to what you define as the services you provide to your customers.
The goal of service level management is to maintain and improve IT service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring and reporting upon IT service achievement and the instigation of actions to eradicate poor service. Service level management acts as the key customer interface into the IT organization and, where poor service is identified, acts as the customer's agent in driving service improvement activities.
Service Level Management is the process of defining, agreeing, documenting and then managing the levels IT services to be provided to a customer. The levels of service provided should be cost justified against the business benefit they bring. Establishing service levels can be viewed as akin to creating the marketing plan for the IT department or for an IT organization.
There are 4 key words in this definition of service level management: defining, agreeing, documenting and managing. Defining what service are provided is important because an IT organization, whether providing internal or external services, should understand what services its customers require and to what level. It should understand what its own capabilities are. Agreeing is important because both the buyer and supplier of the service must agree on what is to be provided. If they do not then neither party will be satisfied. Documenting is a critical step as it demonstrates a commitment from both parties. Management too is important must work actively to ensure that it can fulfil its end of the bargain.
What is culture?
Culture refers to the values and belief of the organization – the normal way of doing things. It can be referred to as the ‘personality’ of an organization. Component parts of the culture include:
- The way authority is exercised and people rewarded.
- Method of communication.
- The degrees of formality required in working hours and dress and the extent to which procedures and regulations are enforced.
Procedures, therefore, should support the culture and not govern or influence it.
What is service culture?
The idea of a service culture can be summed up in one true saying – “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.
A Service culture means an orientation towards helping people. The technical quality of the work is important – that’s precisely why a service culture is important. Without it, the value of technology can remain largely untapped in organizations.
By taking the time and effort to listen to customers it is possible to understand the service being provided from their perspective. The key point about providing service is attention to detail; to go that little bit further to ‘delight’ the customer.
What is customer service?
Customer service is:
- Providing the right quality of services to meet the customers’ requirement
- Help customers make the best use of these services
- Being receptive to customers’ needs and problem and provide them with effective support at all times.
To achieve customer service requires effective communication and cooperation between the IT department and the business.
The primary reason the IT department exists is to keep their customers productive. It is therefore imperative to attain a customer profile. The following questions can be asked to determine the ‘look’ of an IT department’s customer profile:
- Who are they?
- How many are there?
- Where are they?
- What technology do they use?
- What do they use it for?
- How often and when do they use it?
- How IT literate are they?
- How IT friendly are they?
- How controlled is customers’ environment?
- What are the customers’ priorities?
- What does the customer want?
