Importance of Service Level Agreements in the B2B Industry

If you’re a B2B (business-to-business) company and you don’t have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place with your customers, you're missing out on an important opportunity to improve customer retention and satisfaction. SLAs are contractually agreed upon terms between a company and their customers that ensures the services provided meet certain thresholds (i.e. uptime, responsiveness, etc.). This can mean guaranteeing servers will have 99.9% uptime for your product or that all customer service inquiries will be responded to within a 24-hour window. Know more: SLA security With many companies already striving for a high level of service, what is the importance of Service Level Agreements in the B2B industry? Here are the key reasons so many companies rely on SLAs for their profitability… They strengthen the customer relationship at its core – From a customer’s perspective, entering into a new business relationship has a lot of risk. A bad relationship can lead to operational issues, impacting the bottom line and even their professional career. SLAs are the safety net of accountability that businesses use to alleviate these fears. They ensure customers won’t be forgotten after they sign on the dotted line by holding everyone fully accountable for their actions. Some SLAs even offer financial and product “kickbacks” to customers should a business not hold up their end of the agreement, eliminating even more potential concerns.