Maximize SLA Compliance with Business Hours and Holidays

The key to delivering on SLAs starts with transparency around business hours. 

A clear understanding of your business hours and holidays can be the difference between meeting client expectations and missing the mark. Customizable scheduling helps keep your service commitments aligned with your actual availability, so you can avoid accidental breaches. Here’s how the right business hours calendar can streamline your operations and keep your clients satisfied.

Why Business Hours Matter for MSPs SLA Compliance

Managing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is at the heart of every MSP’s operations. Business hours define the scope of services provided and prevent customers from expecting support during off-hours. The ability to deliver on promises while keeping customers happy depends on setting clear expectations, and sticking to them. Without accurate business hours, MSPs risk misaligned expectations, leading to frustrated customers and SLA breaches.

SLAs and their Dependence on Accurate Business 

SLAs are built on promises. You’re telling clients, “We’ve got you covered, and here’s how we’ll make it happen.” But this commitment only works if it’s tied to reality. If your SLAs don’t reflect your true availability, you could find yourself in breach of the agreement—through no fault of your own.

You might promise a 1-hour response time for critical issues, but if your client submits a request at 10 p.m. on a holiday, when your team isn’t available, that promise suddenly becomes impossible to keep.

This is where Atera’s new customizable business hours and holiday scheduling feature comes into play for MSPs. It allows you to set client-specific hours of availability so that SLAs reflect your actual working hours, not an optimistic ideal. This way, you’re not scrambling to meet unrealistic expectations, and your clients know exactly when you’re online and ready to help.

Avoid These Common MSP SLA Mistakes

MSPs sometimes make the mistake of over-promising or setting unrealistic response times without considering their actual availability. This can lead to frustration and potential disputes. To avoid these pitfalls:

• Set clear, achievable response times.
• Communicate regularly with clients about expectations.
• Use automated tools to track SLA performance and make real-time adjustments as necessary.

Atera’s Customizable Business Hours and Holidays

With this feature in Atera’s PSA ticketing solution, MSPs have full control to tailor their availability, down to the finest detail. This flexibility lets you create accurate service windows based on customer needs, making SLA compliance easier to maintain. 

Need to block off a specific date for team training or an annual holiday? No problem. By integrating holiday schedules directly into your operations, you ensure customers are fully aware of your availability and their SLAs automatically adjust when you’re out of office.

Use Cases

Handling Holidays and Special Events with Ease

One of the biggest challenges MSPs face is managing customer expectations during holidays. Holiday season comes around, and suddenly, you’re flooded with tickets that could’ve been avoided with better communication. 

With Atera’s Business hours calendars, you can preemptively schedule holidays and days off into the system, making sure no tickets get logged on days your team isn’t available. 

When your customers are aware of these non-working days in advance, it gives them time to plan accordingly and sets clear expectations on when they can reach you for support. That way, you avoid unnecessary SLA violations during public holidays or company-wide breaks, as SLAs automatically adjust to pause or delay responses during these periods.

Avoiding SLA Breaches Due to Unaccounted Non-Working Days

This is a nightmare scenario for any MSP: A ticket is logged, the clock is ticking on your SLA, but it’s a national holiday your client didn’t know you were observing. Before you know it, you’ve missed the deadline, and now you’re dealing with the fallout of an SLA breach. 

With Atera’s holiday scheduling, this is no longer an issue. Simply block out these days, and SLAs will automatically pause or adjust accordingly, saving you from unnecessary penalties and keeping your clients happy.

What happens when a client logs a ticket during a national holiday? Without clear communication about non-working days, you risk violating your SLA without even realizing it. With Atera’s holiday feature, these days are automatically accounted for, pausing or adjusting your SLAs so you don’t accidentally fall out of compliance.

Conclusion: Improve Your SLA Compliance with Atera

In a world where SLAs are often the benchmark for customer satisfaction, accuracy is everything. By using Atera’s new customizable business hours and holiday features, you can make sure that your SLAs reflect real-world availability, protect your team from overwork, and improve customer satisfaction. Make the most of Atera’s flexibility – try out 14 day free trial – start setting up your business hours today to stay on top of your SLA compliance game.