Customer service capabilities in Dynamics CRM have evolved considerably over the last few releases. This is especially true in the case of Enhanced SLAs (introduced in CRM 2015) which have significantly improved the ability to drive meaningful insights through Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance reporting.
While a wealth of useful views, charts, and dashboards can be developed using this functionality, they aren’t available out of the box. Consequently, some managers might not be aware of what’s possible.
In this post, I’ll walk through some examples to help organizations work toward developing improved SLA performance reporting capabilities in CRM.
Using CRM 2015 for SLA Performance Reporting
While Enhanced SLAs in CRM 2015 certainly support performance reporting, what is strange is that Microsoft does not provide out of the box views, charts, or dashboards that would make it easy for Customer Service Managers to leverage the functionality.
Thankfully, it isn’t too difficult to build and configure your own SLA performance management tools. Without giving too much away, the trick lies in leveraging the SLA KPI Instance entity.
Rather than capturing SLA KPI details on the Case record like the Standard SLA, the Enhanced SLA’s KPI Instance entity captures the KPI details in a unified list (see screenshot below), referencing the parent Case by way of a ‘Regarding’ field.
The SLA KPI Instance record stores the Start, Warning, Failure, and Succeeded Dates.
SLA Performance Reporting: Example Reports
1. SLA by Type and Status
Since Enhanced SLAs manage the SLA KPI Instance ‘Status’ value automatically, it is easy to create charts such as “SLA by Type and Status,” which shows for each KPI measure (i.e. Resolve By), the number of cases sitting in each SLA status (i.e. In Progress, Succeeded).
2. Non-compliant SLAS by Agent
Having all SLA KPI Instances stored in a single entity allows for Customer Service Managers to easily report on all SLAs, regardless of the KPI measure. This would be useful when building charts like “Non-compliant SLAs by Agent,” showing the number of SLA KPI Instances that are noncompliant, by case owner.
3. Average Success Time by Case Priority and SLA Measure
With a little extra effort, you can add a Success Time field to the SLA KPI Instance entity and use a custom workflow activity to calculate the actual time taken to successfully meet a KPI measure. This would allow you to determine whether you’re meeting the SLA easily, or, if items are being completed with one minute to spare. This information can be surfaced on a dashboard, through a chart such as “Average Success Time by Case Priority and SLA Measure.”
4. SLA Performance Dashboard
These charts, combined with a “Noncompliant Cases” view, when added to a dashboard, would empower Customer Service Managers to track, manage, and measure SLA performance, and drive improved customer service.
SLA Performance Reporting: Next Steps
Whether you’re already on the latest release or are considering an upgrade (not sure to best keep NAV up-to-date? Check out this eBook), having a plan to leverage this functionality makes a lot of sense for customer service organizations.
There are also a few indications that Microsoft’s introduction of Enhanced SLAs and the SLA KPI Instance are laying the foundation for SLA performance management for non-service related entities as well. Take, the “Regarding’ field on the SLA KPI Instance, for example. This would be useful for use cases such as measuring the ‘Time to Qualify’ an Opportunity.
We’re looking forward to seeing how Microsoft continues to invest, develop, and improve the Service Level capabilities in the upcoming releases!
