Service level agreements (SLAs) for Internet service providers (ISPs) in South Africa are often difficult to understand and do not help to improve customer experience.

The transparency of SLAs should be improved to boost the use of ISP ser- vices in South Africa, says Internet service provider, co-location and hosting specialist company XDSL commercial director Danie Fourie.

Some of the problems arise from custom- ers not understanding the technicalities of the agreements, but XDSL has changed the often lengthy agreements to a grid matrix of service level offerings, enabling customers to select the necessary level of service for their business requirements and budget allowances.

XDSL believes that more companies would use more ISP services, if there were more clarity and surety from service providers.

“For example, we provide direct contact details for our technical support teams, if the customer chooses a high-level service agreement, and provide updates for cus- tomers on the status of the problem every 15 minutes. This improves customer experi- ence and enables them, in turn, to manage the expectations of their customers,” says Fourie.

Using this type of transparent service and transparent SLAs should be industry best practices and will boost the use of ISP services, growing the industry in South Africa, he adds.

Customers should clearly understand what they are agreeing to and what services they will receive. This is necessary to ensure that users pay for what they require, which should, in turn, lead to more services being used.

“Another key concern for businesses is that they cannot change ISPs easily once they have entered into an agreement. However, owing to the lack of clarity, some companies may choose to forgo using an ISP service, preferring instead to imple-ment a system on site, despite it costing more than a service offering because they are more certain of the services they will receive,” says Fourie.

Further, XDSL also enables customers to choose their customer experience level separately from their SLA.

“A small or niche company may require only medium service levels, but may need to manage the expectation of customers, which will require good interaction with the XDSL support services,” he highlights. “Service providers should assist custom-ers to assess their exact business require-ments, which will lend itself to a specific set of SLAs for each business and improved use of ISP services in South Africa.”