Exceptional Service Levels!

NOC Manager Josh Lillard (before)

Emerge NOC manager Josh Lillard loves to reward his team for a job well done. And Josh gets this privilege quite often with his outstanding team at Emerge. On Monday August 4th, Josh rewarded an exceptional 98.03% SLA (Service Level Agreement) for his NOC engineers. Throughout the day, they were able to shave Josh's beard (however they saw fit), enjoy lunch together and smash a pie in Josh's face.

Q&A

What is SLA?  SLA stands for Service Level Agreement.  This is our agreement with our managed service customers for our responsiveness to their requests (service tickets).

Why is SLA important?  SLA is important to ensure we are providing customers with the best experience possible.  All or our customers have SLA criteria outlined in their contracts with Emerge and we manage our priorities around our customers SLA’s.

What was the goal?  Our internal SLA goal is 95%.

Half beard courtesy of Duane Tackett

How was this different from past goals?  In July we hit our highest SLA % ever, with an outstanding 98.03%.  Below is a chart that shows where we have been for all of 2013.

2013
Jan	95.08%
Feb	95.08%
Mar	95.07%
Apr	95.62%
May	95.73%
Jun	95.16%

NOC engineer Sarah Knapp

Have you done anything like this in the past with your team?  Everyone enjoys a fun atmosphere and I try to create that for my team here at Emerge.  In July I took them all to my gun club and let them each shoot 50 clay pigeons & had a fantastic lunch.  I think it was a great team building event & it allowed for my team to blow off some steam (literally).  This was just to thank them for the awesome job they do on a daily basis.  In the past I have ran contests with cash rewards & coupons for leaving 2 hours early etc. 

How many team members contributed to this success?  Our SLA is effected by all of our engineers.  So 18 people helped contribute to the success that we have seen with our SLA obtainment.

After the pie...

Is there a customer experience you are most proud of?  I’m very proud of my team, they do a fantastic job but that’s the norm here at Emerge.  So I would have to say that when a customer goes out of their way to deliver positive feedback on my team members is what I’m the most proud of.  Everyone knows that any negative experience is quickly brought up and discussed, but it really takes a positive experience for someone to go out of their way and provide that feedback & this is when you know that you’re doing something correctly.