3 minute read
First-time fix rate is a higher priority than time-based SLAs
Given today’s fast-changing environments where catering service and maintenance is provided, service level agreements (SLAs) between customers and third-party service providers can often drive the wrong outcomes.
Following the challenges and changes of the pandemic, alongside the evergrowing issue of supply chain and parts availability, metrics that have previously been used to judge whether a service provider’s SLAs (including those for servicing and maintaining catering equipment) are effective have in some cases become completely irrelevant.
The message from the team at Hobart Service is clear –is it now time to review and rethink your SLAs?
Across the industry, everyone understands the importance of mitigating any downtime. When a piece of equipment breaks down, the critical factor is the time it takes to fix the equipment, not the time it takes for a technician to arrive on site.
Performance responsibility
However, some providers promise quick-reaction SLAs, and meet them, yet are not always in a position once they arrive on site to provide a fix. This can result in equipment standing dormant for days while parts are ordered or they wait for a more qualified technician, bringing operations to an abrupt halt.
Many people in facilities management roles have a level of responsibility for the performance of fieldbased service providers. As an industry that is heavily focused on customer satisfaction, their first-time fix rate is crucial.
Put yourself in the customer’s position: when something goes wrong, they want it fixed straight away. They don’t want to put processes on hold, losing both time and money in the process, while an engineer attempts on multiple occasions to rectify the issue, whilst being monitored by an arrival time on site SLA or KPI.
For businesses with a first-time fix rate of over 70%, customer retention was at 86%. Those with a first-time fix rate of under 70% saw their customer retention rate drop to 76% — a decrease of 10%.
There are multiple ways to improve first-time fix rate, ranging from training employees to the highest standard possible on the equipment they will service/ repair to ensuring a strong supply chain of spare parts and/or technician van stock and encouraging a PPM programme.
A PPM (planned preventative maintenance) service contract gives customers ultimate flexibility, especially with all-inclusive contracts which offer complete peace of mind – with all OEM parts, labour and travel included. These leave customers to rest assured they are getting the leading service for one fixed cost with absolutely no hidden extras or small print.
Planned preventative maintenance checks are essential to identify any potential problems with your equipment, minimising any future downtime and costly repairs and allowing service technicians to check for worn parts, pressure issues and health and safety concerns and fix the problem before it becomes costly and disruptive – which will also negatively impact first-time fix success rates.
Keith Mackie, managing director of Hobart Service:
“Our advice to any businesses who are currently under a time-based call-out SLA, yet experiencing issues with first-time fixes or parts availability, is to revisit the contract and SLA regularly, whilst discussing and exploring what is business critical. Response times simply state how quickly the service provider must respond to your report of a problem (even if just to confirm receipt of your request). Repair times (deadline for the problem to be fully solved) also tend to be stated as non-binding targets, or sometimes, are left out entirely.
“Customers need an approximate deadline for solving problems. Vendors may explain that repair times are purposely omitted because they cannot estimate repair time until they know the root cause, however, no matter the cause, you are paying for a service you are not getting; therefore, it is entirely reasonable for you to ask for a repair deadline, with a remedy if missed.”
