Episode 468: Issuance of Service Credit on SLA

SLA, Service Level Agreement...

It is a system that Cloud service providers and telecommunications service providers to declare their own "Service Quality" and to make refund, etc. when the actual service falls below the standard. In this "Cloud-first" era, you might have seen or heard it even if you are not in the IT industry.


The following Workflow is a Business Process for a service provider to make "refund,etc."

Although this may be unfamiliar to general people, the SLA system actually is mostly starts the flow of refunding, etc. when receiving "Claims from Users". Well, it sounds like "System to refund after receiving the complaint", but it is so in reality...

However, any softwares contains bugs. Also in the specifications that are believed secure in the world, there is always weakness. And yet, use styles of the user side are infinite variety. Some people would be stuck, some people wouldn't. It might be an unavoidable method, because to "carry out the refund, etc." under such circumstances.

[SLA Claim]

Auto Generation of the Answer Draft on Receiving a Contact

Contact from customers should be replied 'quickly' and 'accurately'.

There are many 'Contact Management System', but most of them do not support your original answering flow. The motivation of business flow improvement varies such as Improving quality, speed up, recurrence prevention. But if the system did not reflect your original creative Contact Reply flow, the 'Human Cost' will keep on increasing.
Suppose if there is a business rule that 'reviewing by technical staff is a must for the answer to inquiries about bug', it should be managed by 'Business Process Management system' rather than by 'Contact Management System'. The progress (bottleneck) can be overviewed on the Flow Chart, the instructions by the chief manager will speed up. (Moreover, flow expansion might happen that the receptionist would distribute queries manually according to who is good at.)

In the following Business Process definition, a Workflow from 'email inquiry' or 'inquiry via Web form' to 'reply email sending' is defined. Using this Workflow, you can record 'the Time of checked by senior staff' and 'Advice from other departments', as well as 'Sentences of the primary answer' or 'Sentences of final answer', as Business data in a bunch. It will be referred as knowledge, and it could be the basic data for the further improvement.

[Inquiry flow-Auto-set Reply]

Be a Concierge service! Automatic Recording of the Required Time for Responding.

How long is the average corresponding time to the contact via Website?
Are you dealing with the contacts on weekends for sure?

When the number of processed grows, you will want to analysis it. For example, 'Average corresponding time' to the contacts via "Contact Form" on your Website. When you observe your business quantitatively, business improvement will be accelerated. It will be the basic data for evaluation meeting, and will help to put up the goal easily.

The following Business Process Definition is devised for analyzing. That is, not only to start [Inquiries Workflow] automatically, "the time it took to the final answer" and "the day of the week" of the contact comes in will be automatically set as business records,

• when there is a submission to the "Contact Form" on your Website, or,
• when an email comes in to the "Contact email address" which has been published here and there. 

To tell the truth, it is almost the same as the Workflow which we have introduced to you in the past, but it is different at the point that it has been added "Script Task" for data processing.

[Inquiry flow-response time]

Visualizing 'Inquiry Handling' in the Cloud-based Workflow

Are you capable to answer sufficient information quickly to inquiries through 'Inquiry Form'?

The inquirer may have a 'large anxiety'.
The inquirer may have a 'large expectation'.

You might be able to ensure a certain quality of supporting in 'Inquiry Form' or 'Inquiry Email' by devising procedures in the team, while 'Telephone Support' highly depends on the ability of the person.

In the following setting sample of Business Process, it will start 'Inquiry Response flow' automatically when;

• a question is submitted through the 'Contact Us form' in the Web page,
• an email comes in at the email address for Contact Us that has been published here and there.

That is, automatically starting 'Inquiry Handling' by a team.

If the question was simple, the answer is prepared and the operation is completed soon after the Workflow was started. For a higher difficulty level question, only the primary response will be sent and advice request is routed to the R & D department, etc.. In either of the cases, all the inquiry will become obvious about 'Who is taking care of' and 'What state it is in' or 'How it is discussed', by managing the Inquiry Handling in Workflow system. Needless to say, visualizing the "Progress" leads to 'speeding up' and 'raising the quality'.

[Inquiry Response flow]

Inquiry Support, 'Model Sentence' is Important, Advices from Surrounding is More

When you have succeeded "Cloud Computing" of the Workflow, you surely will want to make "Workflow for email queries corresponding" as well.

The reasons are simple.

• Can correspond from anywhere. (When you are out or at home)
• Can grasp who is corresponding (The point of view of real-time monitoring)
• Can find where the bottleneck is (The point of view of performance aggregation)

However, when you run the Workflow in practice, you will notice that "flow of obtaining advice from internal" is more important than "flow of assigning respondent".
That is for example, if queried "Is the server down?", the contact person doesn't even know about it. Also, when an inquiry comes saying "I want to ask something technical about...", the contact person has absolutely no choice to seek advice from the technical department. And how soon you can respond to queries of this kind will affect the reliability of the company.

The following Workflow, "Query Response Operation flow" is enclosed a very simple "Advice Request flow". It is very excellent.

[Query Response Operation flow]