SLAs, SLOs, and KPIs: Measuring Success in Application Support Services

In today’s IT world, application support and maintenance services are critical to software stability, performance, and user experience. For these services to deliver a business boost, it is critical to deliver measurable results. This is where Service Level Agreements or SLAs, Service Level Objectives or SLOs, and Key Performance Indicators or KPIs come into play.

Effectively using metrics to measure results and knowing how to use them correctly makes it possible to have predictable results or make adjustments to processes when indicators are not satisfactory. In this article, our team will analyze and explain these terms, explain their significance for the efficiency of support services, and more.

SLAs, SLOs, KPIs Explanation with Examples

Our team has gathered the information and written the detailed explanations:

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

An SLA is an official formal agreement signed between a customer and a service provider, which clearly defines the level and type of services provided, the obligations of both parties, response and resolution times, penalties, etc. Examples of SLA of different types:

● Response time: “High priority and critical tasks will be taken up within 1 hour, 24/7.”

● Response time: “Low priority tasks have a response time of 1 business day.”

● Issue resolution time: “High priority bugs will be resolved within 5 business hours.s”

● Issue resolution time: “Low priority enhancement requests resolved within 7 business days”

● System recovery: “In the event of an outage, the recovery time will be no more than 3 hours.”

● Service availability: “Client-facing services will have no more than 3 outages per quarter.”

● Backups: “All systems must have automatic backups every 12 hours.”

● Backups: “Data recovery operations from backups will be performed within 3 hours of the initial request.”

Service Level Objectives (SLOs)

SLOs are components of SLAs, but they are used internally. They are specific, measurable goals that define the expected level of performance. Examples of SLOs of different types:

● Incident management: “95% of P1 incidents should be resolved within 5 hours.s”

● Incident management: “70% of all reported incidents should receive the acknowledgement within 3 hours.”

● Latency: “98% of the API requests should respond in under 300ms during peak ho.urs”

● Bugs: “85% of P1 reported bugs should be fixed during 2 business days.”

● Deployment: “90% of deployments should be completed without rollbacks”.

● Customer tickets: “90% of customer requests should be responded to in less than 4 hours.”

Key Performance Indicators or KPIs

KPIs are broader metrics that track and show the results and performance of the support team over time. Examples of KPIs of different types:

● Ticket backlog: “Backlog should not have more than 40 unresolved tasks at any point in time.”

● Ticket backlog: “All tasks that are open for more than 10 business days should be reviewed, prioritized, and addressed.”

● Tickets daily volume: “The application support and maintenance team should, on average should handle 75 tickets daily.”

● Customer satisfaction or CSAT: “85% of customers should score the provided support service as satisfied.”

● Repeat incident rate: “Not more than 5% of tickers should be reopened with the same issue within 1 business month.”

● First response time: “The average 1st response time for any ticket should not exceed 1 hour.”

To sum up, here is a short comparison based on a similar case for each of the indicators:

Type

SLA

SLO

KPI

Aimed at

Legally binding conditions and obligations

Sets internal performance goals for the support team

Measures the common performance in accordance with the set metrics

Example

Resolve 90% of enterprise tickets within 16 hours or get penalties

Resolve 85% of tickets within 9 hours

The average time for ticket resolution is 12 hours

Challenges in the Introduction of SLAs, SLOs, and KPIs

● Lack of understanding of metrics. If the application maintenance and support team doesn’t understand the metrics, they won’t be able to use them. That’s why you need to create visual dashboards for tracking and provide training.

● More focus on closing the ticket than on its quality resolution. If a team is too focused on quantitative results, it may close tickets prematurely to meet metrics. In such cases, the problem recurrence rate and ticket reopening are common.

● Unrealistic expectations and excessive demands. If the metrics are set unrealistically, it can lead to burnout of the support team.

● Overcomplexity of metrics

● Lack of flexibility. Indicators need to be reviewed from time to time, taking into account the composition of the team, its expansion or contraction, changes in customer expectations, etc.

● Shifting focus to achieving short-term results instead of long-term goals

Benefits of SLAs, SLOs, and KPIs for Application Maintenance

● Clarity, transparency, and understanding of results. The established indicators allow for a clear division of responsibilities and scope of work and services provided. All metrics allow for a certain limit in expectations regarding the service and confidence in its quality. The customer, in turn, is confident that his solution will be functional, will receive a faster response from the support team, etc.

● Increasing customer satisfaction. SLA, SLO, and KPI metrics allow for a structured process for completing tasks, and the customer understands that their problems are being addressed at a serious level with an appropriate attitude. Fast response time, quick resolution of questions or urgent problems – all this contributes to a higher level of customer satisfaction.

● Proactive thinking and problem-solving approach. Having a clear understanding of metrics and tracking them over time allows teams to be more engaged in the process and address the “root” of problems, preventing them from escalating into something more global. For example, if the metrics show that ticket resolution times are longer than expected, this may indicate that the team needs additional support or reinforcement.

● High team performance. Established metrics allow teams to understand priorities, complete all tasks on time, and with high levels.e

● Work insights and data-driven improvements. Based on insights, you can find “sag points” and quickly correct them.

Conclusion

Setting SLAs, SLOs, and KPIs has a big importance for providing quality support services. The application maintenance and support company has established processes, knows how to implement and efficiently use metrics for team performance monitoring, and provides quality services to customers.