How Agentic AI can help IT departments achieve SLA compliance

For both IT departments and managed service providers, complying with the requirements set out in your SLAs is crucial. Meeting (or preferably exceeding) the success metrics outlined in your SLAs will help solidify your IT department’s reputation, boost customer and user trust, and help promote client loyalty within your organization.

For example, Salesforce found that 88% of customers are more likely to renew a contract if all SLA requirements have been met and customer service is strong. Not to mention, there can also be financial penalties for failing to meet SLA compliance as outlined in your agreement. 

So, how can you ensure you meet the standards of your SLAs in today’s modern world, where both ticket volumes and the challenges that IT teams are facing are up? With Agentic AI, you can equip your team to work more efficiently, giving you the ability to boost your metrics for SLA compliance. So let’s dive into the details; here’s how to ensure SLA compliance with Agentic AI. 

What is SLA compliance and why is it so important?

The acronym SLA stands for service level agreement. These agreements are made between a service provider and a customer, and they define the services to be provided and the level of performance that is expected. An SLA will also describe which metrics will be used to evaluate performance as well as what happens if agreed-upon performance levels are not met. 

SLA compliance refers to the level at which the provider is meeting these agreed-upon standards. For IT teams and MSPs, that usually means adhering to metrics like availability and uptime, response and resolution times, mean time to resolution (MTTR), and security. However, there are some common pitfalls that can interfere with IT teams meeting the terms of their agreements, including volume overload, slow manual processes, and delayed escalations. 

According to IBM, key performance indicators (KPIs) are then used “to gauge performance against these targets and enable teams to make continuous improvements.” Clearly defined, relevant, and attainable KPIs in an SLA are the key to SLA compliance. 

Image via TechTarget

The Role of Agentic AI in improving SLA compliance

Agentic AI is artificial intelligence that can operate and make decisions autonomously. Agentic AI tools can learn, adapt, and act based on real-time context and data and work toward preset goals. This showcases far greater capabilities than previous AI models like conversational AI and generative AI. Agentic AI goes beyond responding to prompts. It can act autonomously to accomplish tasks, retains memory, and learns from past actions, improving over time. 

The incredible abilities of Agentic AI are set to help IT teams improve SLA tracking and compliance. Agentic AI helps teams streamline processes, automate data collection and analysis, proactively resolve issues, improve communication, and reduce human error. Let’s take a closer look at the ways that Agentic AI contributes to better SLA compliance stats… 

Key ways Agentic AI enhances SLA compliance

Faster ticket triage and prioritization

Agentic AI tools can auto-classify and prioritize tickets based on urgency as well as meeting the terms of an SLA. According to TrustRadius, ticket volume has increased by 16% since the pandemic, as more customers and users rely on remote work and technology to get things done. 

For SLAs that include MTTR or other resolution time metrics, effectively triaging and prioritizing tickets can help meet these requirements. Some Agentic AI tools can even resolve common support ticket issues without the need for human intervention. 

Predictive issue resolution

Before a ticket or a downtime issue breaches SLA timelines, Agentic AI tools can use proactive issue resolution capabilities. Oftentimes, Agentic AI can take action to resolve a problem without elevating it to a technician. This speeds up resolution timelines. 

Plus, Agentic AI tools can help with implementing scheduling patches and completing standard fixes, meaning that you won’t be struggling to keep up with routine maintenance. 

Intelligent escalations

AI tools can monitor tickets approaching breach and escalate them proactively. If a ticket is approaching noncompliance with SLA requirements, an AI agent can flag the ticket as a priority and ensure it is escalated to the right person and bumped to the front of the line for resolution. 

Continuous monitoring and self-healing

Oftentimes, SLA requirements include maximum downtime or minimum uptime rates. Agent AI tools can help reduce downtime through autonomous actions, such as scheduled patch implementation, proactive issue resolution, and weakness detection that enhances security. 

Real-world outcomes: Agentic AI impact on SLA metrics

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure” is a quote attributed to Peter Drucker, and it’s 100% true. If there’s no way for you to quantify how well things are going within your IT operations, how can you know for sure whether or not you’re improving?

Some of the main KPIs that you can track to measure SLA compliance are:

• Percentage of tickets solved – Leaving tickets unresolved is a big issue
• First Response Time (FRT) – Responding to customers in a timely manner is crucial
• Escalation rate – The fewer tickets that escalate past your tier 1 support, the better
• Downtime minutes – Downtime is expensive, so keeping your downtime low is an important goal for all organizations
• Mean time to resolution (MTTR) – The last thing customers want to deal with is unresolved issues that they just can’t solve

One of the most common SLA metrics for IT departments and MSPs is mean time to resolution, or MTTR, for tickets. When ticket volume increases, it can be hard for IT technicians to meet the demand while maintaining quick resolution times. Atera client Leeds United Football Club was facing this very issue. With only six engineers supporting over 1,000 users, ticket resolution times were increasing.

By implementing Atera’s AI Copilot tool, Leeds United was able to reduce ticket volume by 35%, empowering many users to resolve common problems on their own with the guidance of the AI agent. This led to faster MTTR, as technicians were able to handle more complicated tickets quickly and efficiently and still benefited from AI Copilot’s other abilities, like script and command line generation, ticket summarization, and knowledge base article creation. 

Image via Atera 

How to implement Agentic AI for SLA success

Wondering how to implement Agentic AI to improve your SLA compliance metrics and thus boost customer satisfaction, reputation, and trust? Here are a few steps to follow along the way. 

Start with pilot programs: Take advantage of free trials and other pilot programs with a “test and learn” mentality. You can see the impact Agentic AI has on your SLA metrics without committing to a full contract. Atera, for instance, offers a 30-day free trial so that you can see the impact of our solution before you fully commit. 

Customize AI models to align with SLA policies: While most SLAs have metrics in common, each one is slightly different. With Agentic AI tools, you can customize the AI agent’s goals, alert thresholds, and more in order to best align with the requirements of your SLAs.

Integrate SLA reporting into AI monitoring dashboards: One of the incredible abilities of Agentic AI is its capacity to offer real-time data collection, analysis, and reporting. With a user-friendly interface and accessible monitoring dashboard, you can monitor your SLA compliance in an easy-to-access location that ensures all of your team members are privy to up-to-the-minute data. 

Common challenges of Agentic AI usage in SLA compliance

Agentic AI has amazing potential for bettering SLA compliance in the IT space and beyond. However, there are some common challenges that IT decision makers should be aware of. First off, it’s important to ensure that AI usage aligns with legal and compliance aspects of SLAs. 

One of the biggest concerns with AI utilization is data privacy. When you’re selecting a tool to integrate Agentic AI into your workflows, make sure that you choose a provider that holds data privacy and protection in high esteem. 

Understanding the ethical implications of AI is paramount. In order to ensure that you are using Agentic AI ethically, it’s crucial to balance AI autonomy with human oversight. As IBM reports, “the groundwork for all AI governance is human-centered.” This basically means that IT department accountability is the first step in effective and ethical AI usage. Human actors must take responsibility for issues like AI bias and fairness, transparency, consent, and oversight.  

These considerations don’t mean that you can’t use Agentic AI to help achieve better SLA compliance. Rather, it’s important to understand and educate yourself about ongoing ethical AI implementation in order to avoid the potential for lawsuits or regulatory noncompliance. 

Image via Zapier

What does the future of SLA compliance look like?

It’s clear that the future of SLA compliance is bright with Agentic AI at the forefront of trends like autonomous contract monitoring and real-time SLA adjustments. For example, Gartner predicts that Agentic AI will resolve 80% of common customer service issues without the need for human intervention by 2029. Talk about improved MTTR!  

Likewise, Harvard Business Review predicts that Agentic AI will allow for unprecedented levels of human-machine synergy. HBR predicts that Agentic AI will contribute to more robust SLA compliance in the future with impressive capabilities like “proactively managing complex IT systems to pre-empt outages” and “engaging in realistic interactions with patients or customers to resolve issues.” When organizations embrace Agentic AI as a key tool for SLA compliance, the possibilities are endless. 

Overhaul your SLA compliance with Agentic AI

With the help of Agentic AI, SLA compliance is infinitely more attainable – and you won’t have to worry about the fallout from failing to meet these contract requirements. With Agentic AI’s incredible capabilities in enhancing IT teams’ efficiency, productivity, and utilization, you’ll be able to improve your SLA compliance metrics for the better across the board. 

Ready to use Agentic AI to minimize SLA breaches, reduce possible penalties, and boost client trust? Get started with your free 30-day trial of Atera’s AI-powered platform and see your customer satisfaction and SLA compliance skyrocket.