If you’re in the B2B industry then having Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is important for you, as it helps you in customer retention and customer satisfaction. SLAs are certain terms and conditions upon which you and your buyer agreed upon.
In short, we can say it is a contract between the company and its customers. This can mean all customer service inquiries will be responded within 24-hour or providing real-time support.
Many companies already striving for a high level of services, what is the importance of SLA in the B2B industry? Here are the key reasons so many companies rely on SLAs for their profitability.
Help in strengthen customer relationship
From a customer’s point of view, entering into a new business relationship or buying from a new dealer has a risk. A bad relationship can lead to many issues like operational issues, service issues, etc. SLAs work as a safety net for businesses to overcome this risk. They ensure customers won’t be forgotten after they signed up for the product or service.
Can bring more business
Having SLA can be an incredibly powerful tool. Instead of promising great SLAs over a phone call, allow your prospect to ask your current customers about their experience with your brand and with your SLA. Hearing about your SLA story can make or break your future deal, especially if they hear of poor service experience.
It might be possible that your prospects are looking to start a new professional relationship because they’ve experienced a poor service from their past clients and are looking for someone who listens and responds to their needs and provides the solution. With this in mind, leveraging business SLAs can be a powerful sales tool.
It creates clear and defined communication boundaries
Having SLA provides clear guidelines for employees to communicate with customers, it works in favor of both and aren’t one-sided. A carefully constructed agreement can also be leveraged as a resource by your employees for difficult conversations.
For example, if a customer has a problem and raised a ticket, continuously following up several times a day to check the status of his/her in that case you can ask them to check SLA, where he/she has agreed to allow you certain respond period (say 12 hours) to solve the problem. This reminder usually makes the customer back off and give your team enough time to provide the solution.
A solid way to retain customer
Providing excellent customer service builds your brand credibility/goodwill that ultimately leads you to retain more customers. Take the time to build this agreement that is good for both i.e. you and your customer by meeting your customer’s exact needs but are also fair to your business.
Providing top customer service not only leads to happier business relationships, but it also reduces churn and increases your referral rate.
Service Level Agreements are important in the B2B industry because it creates a formalized communication process that both a business and its customers agree upon to smoothen the working and the communication of both the parties.
