Practical guides for modern support
Honest writing on reducing ticket volume, building a knowledge base, SLA design, support automation, and the messy realities of running a support team that customers actually trust.
SLA Service Credits: Putting a Price on a Missed Target
When you breach an SLA, what does the customer actually get? A service credit is the financial remedy written into the contract, usually a slice of the monthly fee refunded when you miss a target. Done well it keeps a promise honest; done badly it becomes an accounting headache that rewards the wrong behavior. Here is how service credits work and how to design them so they protect the relationship instead of straining it.
Support Entitlements: Making Sure the Right Customers Get the Right Support
Not every customer is entitled to the same support, and a help desk that cannot tell the difference either overspends serving people who did not pay for premium help or underserves the ones who did. Entitlements connect a contact to what their plan or contract actually promises. Here is how to run them without turning support into a gatekeeper.
When an SLA Is About to Breach: The Escalation Playbook That Saves the Ticket
Setting SLA targets is the easy part; knowing what happens in the last hour before one breaches is where teams fall apart. The tiered warning-and-escalation playbook — who gets pulled in when, what to tell the customer, and how to handle a breach that already happened — so a clock running out triggers action instead of a silent miss.
The SLA Clock: Business Hours, Pauses, and Why Your Breach Numbers Look Wrong
An SLA target is meaningless until you decide how the clock runs. Does it tick overnight? Does it pause while you wait on the customer? Get the clock wrong and you breach SLAs you actually met — or pass ones you blew. How business-hours calendars and stop-the-clock states make SLA reporting honest.
OLAs and Underpinning Contracts: The Internal Promises That Make Your SLAs Achievable
An SLA is a promise to your customer. But the customer-facing clock almost never depends on support alone — it depends on engineering, infrastructure, a payments vendor, a hardware supplier. OLAs and underpinning contracts are the internal and vendor-side promises that make the external promise keepable. How to build the dependency chain so an SLA is a commitment you can actually hold, not a number you hope for.
SLOs and Error Budgets for Support: Turning SLA Targets Into a Decision Tool
An SLA is a promise; an SLO is the internal target you manage to, and the error budget is what tells you when to stop and fix something. How to layer objectives and budgets on top of your SLAs so the numbers drive decisions instead of just measuring blame.