Service level agreements often pose major challenges for MSPs. Still, clients have expectations. Fortunately, advancements in artificial intelligence offer MSPs new tools to manage these challenges effectively while enhancing client satisfaction. AI significantly accelerates time to delivery on service level agreements (SLAs). It also provides transparency on when work will be completed via automated reporting.
The SLA Management Struggle
Despite the benefits, MSPs often grapple with the complexities and constraints of SLAs. These are difficult to manage without the right approach.
Ronnie Parisella
“Your service level agreement is the commitment to your client that you will respond to their issues,” said Ronnie Parisella, project manager at Databit. “It’s about managing the understanding of what we do.”
If a customer doesn’t understand the difference between a computer being down, the internet being down, and a network outage, they won’t allow the MSP to craft an industry-standard SLA. It’s up to the MSP to articulate why proper SLA implementations are important.
Dawn Sizer agreed. The CEO of 3rd Element Consulting said that not everything is an emergency, even if the client believes it is. The challenge is to meet clients in “healthy ways” when you have a heavy ticket load or are short staffed, she said.
How AI Helps Meet — or Exceed — SLA Expectations
Automation can dramatically improve the efficiency of SLAs, according to Sizer. “Anything you can put in place that allows the team to focus on [what is] important gives you a leg up.” Some examples include:
- Chatbots: Chatbots can open tickets and provide technicians with a detailed transcript, enabling faster and more accurate resolution. “[AI is] exceptionally adept at triage,” Parisella noted.
- Technician Tools: AI tools enable technicians to complete tasks faster and more accurately. It also
Dawn Sizer
makes the process repeatable and accurate, explained David Wilkeson, CEO of consultancy MSP Advisor. “A machine is doing it versus a human following a checklist.”
- Reporting Benefits: AI can improve reporting accuracy by scanning ticket types, tracking resolution times, and identifying SLA breaches automatically, Sizer added.
Key Considerations for Deploying AI for SLA Management
Of course, AI must be deployed safely for SLA management, ensuring that no client or MSP data leaves the professional services automation (PSA), Sizer cautioned.
With proper safeguards, AI can search a company’s internal knowledge bases, past tickets, and external sources for fast and accurate resolutions, she said. “AI has a better sense of Google than most people.”
On the reporting side, as long as it can be done safely, AI can scan ticket types, time to resolution, and determine what was outside of any SLA, Sizer said.
David Wilkeson
Reporting becomes more accurate when the tool is doing the work, because AI doesn’t miss key steps, added Wilkeson. AI is especially useful for keeping contracts and PSAs up to date, he said. For example, if a client wants to add an Office 365 license, the MSP can use an AI tool to update the contract and run a report to see how many licenses the client has. Humans are “notoriously wrong” at this process because they often forget a step in the process, Wilkeson noted.
Making the Case for Automation
Though it’s clearly beneficial to use automation for managing SLAs, the biggest challenge with deploying AI is changing your mindset, Parisella said.
That said, people will get used to something as long as it works, he insisted. “I’ve never met an MSP who didn’t say, ‘People are the secret sauce.’ They’re reluctant to apply automation. But it’s so easy, cheap, and prevalent that if you’re not using AI, you’re probably wasting your time and effort.”
The time to embrace AI is now. And those who adopt it stand to gain a competitive edge.
Featured image: DALL-E
