SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS

SLA are internal contracts established between the various service areas of the bank with the business areas to set targets for the delivery of internal services. It can be in time (the timing of processing a credit card sale, the time to make a credit decision for an overdraft, the average time to deliver statements from the various channels to customers), availability of services (the percentage of Internet banking service is available, the percentage of ATM uptime), or the maximum level of processing errors. The service areas must be measured every year in relation to delivery or lack of delivery against the agreements.

The time taken to deliver services must be established, taking into consideration the target customer, the product offering and the brand promise. For a premium client the service response time should be faster than a basic banking customer, and so on.

The above information is shared with sales, operations, and channel managers to understand what is required to deliver the planned volumes and timings. If the bank does not have the required resources, the area must communicate this to the product or service manager who will look for a way to fund any necessary new investments, negotiate with other parties using the shared resource areas to release the resources required, or reduce their target.

As mentioned above, each product and service must have its sales, maintenance and customer management process flow mapped. The product or service manager must agree the process with Sales, IT, Credit and Operations departments on the time of delivery of each step of the product or service delivery flow, translated in a table and SLA contract.

At this stage, the product or service manager has set the targets regarding sales and customer management, agreed the service level expected, and agreed with the various service areas for new and existing customers.

Knowing the above information, the product or service manager can move to the next step.