SLA - clock pause conditions - what are the industry standards

[Fathima1]

Hello Folks, 

As of now our SLA clock pauses only on Hold Awaiting Caller, Awaiting Client Availality and pauses on Resolved state. I would like to know what is the industry standards that they practice for pausing the clock. Often times tickets breach as awaiting vendor parts due to Covid everything is backlogged and other issue is it is breaching due to Awaiting Change. So I need some guidance on what is recommended in ITSM framework and what do other industries follow when it comes to seting conditions for pausing the clock. Breaches are not necessarily bad it shows where improvement or change is required. So it is fine for tickets to be breached with a reasoning. But would love to know the recommended standards. 

[bammar]

Ill try to help answer here - The main goal is to have a Realistic, practical setup so that you wont set up a team for failure or constant breaches if you can help it. 

A. sometimes SLA is based on commitments made to Internal customers /External Customers( we will take ownership, reply, update, or resolve in a certain amount of time.

Example- a Call Center is working all incident assigned to a Group via email/ catalog - they have a commitment to assign, take ownership Of incidents that are Critical in less than 1 hr, High 2 hrs, Medium 4 hours..

Closer to your question- The time that we can judge the responsible group should be the times where it is under their control to act. You mentioned many of the pause conditions that are common- Like when a technician is awaiting information- they change the state accordingly as they cant move forward and they shouldnt be judged for this. Other considerations is blending in SLA with Business Hours - so if you get a ticket at Friday 4:45 and the folks working on it leave at 5 - then its 15 mins used paused till morning Monday 8AM- then if they solve it at 8:15 min after Business hours its 30 min total...

Other considerations-

To the Customer that submitted at 4:45 Friday- in their world it isnt their concern about Business Hours or internal processes- all they know is it took 2.5 days - Internally the agents had it under their control to solve for 30 mins.

If due to pandemic- there are new dependencies straining the usual timing- SLA averages may have to be studied and unless under contract obligations- perhaps increased to reflect the new reality. Also perhaps the dependent change can change the state of the task that has the SLA being measured to a pause state as well to blend in and automate the state change for that situation.

So all in all I hope i didnt go on wild tangents- I know sometimes groups impose SLA on themselves- in this case why be too hard or strict- of course we always want to improve and work in good faith as fast as we can- In other cases its due to contracts or internal commitments. Tracking the real time it takes can give you a guideline and balance between pause conditions or extending the time before breach

[Chandra Sekhar6]

It depends on the schedule of SLA too.

Mostly SLA will be paused after business hours which are setup in schedules and the schedule is attached to the SLA.

Your SLA is pausing on On Hold awaiting caller and etc are because your SLA is set in that way and those are the conditions which were specified in "Pause Condition" section in your SLA.