Service Management
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it
Service Management: Three Components
All customers have expectations regarding the after-sales service and support they get from their suppliers.
Whether these expectations are formally expressed, in a Service Level Agreement, or implied by industry standards, it is vital for companies to consistently meet these expectations if they want loyal, satisfied customers.
In order to ensure that their customers’ expectations are met, it is necessary to define them in a clear and measurable manner. As the saying goes, ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’.
Service Management makes use of 3 components to create a simple but effective manner of defining and measuring service levels.
Service Catalogue
The Service Catalogue allows companies to define exactly what services they offer. The catalogue is completely flexible and is configured to suit each businesses’ unique needs. For example, some companies may choose the geographic locations of their branches, others may use the different skill sets of their service team e.g. X-Rays, Operating Tables, Autoclaves, etc. <br>
Deciding on how to structure the Service Catalogue is one of the tasks that is done during the Implementation of the system and is usually done in a workshop with various stakeholders in the business.
Service Level Agreements
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is made up of one or more Service Level Targets (SLT’s). Even if there are no formal Agreements in place between a company and its customers, there are implied service levels that customers expect to receive, and these should be clearly defined and monitored. <br>
The SLT’s can be specified for different priorities (Low, Medium, High) of service request with different time targets.
Customer Service Contracts
In Medeq, every customer has a Service Contract with the company. These can either be an implied, basic after sales service and support contract or a fully fledged Service Level Agreement that is based on actual equipment availability measures.
Service Contracts define which Services the customer is entitled to and also what performance levels they can expect. The two key measures for performance levels are Time to Respond and Time to Resolve and, although quite simple, these encompass all aspects of a customers expectations from their service providers. The system tracks these two metrics and can issue automatic alerts to the service management team BEFORE they are violated if strict SLA agreements with penalty clauses are in play.
It is important to note that Medeq is not a billing system. It can, however, interface with many common Accounting systems and send them the information they need for both recurring and ad-hoc invoicing.
The system also generates automated reminders for contract expiry dates as well as providing a mechanism to pause services on expired contracts.