The agreement
Service Levels Measured In Their Working Days
A response time written in hours and delivered in working hours produces four different customer experiences from one level of service.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
The supplier who quoted eleven per cent less
Two hours of overlap a day
The supplier who quoted eleven per cent more
Seven hours of overlap a day, and the same weekend as ours
two parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
The two quotations were compared on price, lead time and references. The right-hand column was in neither comparison and was worth more than the eleven per cent.
A cross-border schedule is easier to manage when availability is grounded in evidence; read more on this page provides a practical reference for time, activity, and project reporting.
The surrounding operational question can also be checked against material from Linux Foundation.
The same four-hour response commitment, measured four ways
A ticket raised at 09:00 on a Tuesday
1 / 1The one day of this wait was a working day on their side. Four working hours there, four calendar hours here, and everybody was satisfied
A ticket raised at 16:00 on a Tuesday
2 / 1One of the two days was not a working day on their side: their working day ended before the four hours were up. Met in full and experienced as overnight
A ticket raised at 16:00 on a Thursday
4 / 1Three of the four days were not working days on their side: their week ends on Thursday. Met in full and experienced as four days
A ticket raised at 16:00 on the day before a two-day closure
6 / 1Five of the six days were not working days on their side: the closure, plus their weekend. Met in full, and the subject of a formal complaint
four waits · 13 calendar days · 4 of them working days on the other side
One commitment, honoured in full on all four occasions, and experienced by the customer as four hours, overnight, four days and most of a week. The commitment was never the problem; the unit it was written in was. One team's own job.
A four-hour response commitment, honoured exactly, produces customer experiences ranging from four hours to most of a week.
Nothing about the service varies. What varies is where the four working hours fall relative to the customer's calendar, and the commitment says nothing about that.
The two units
A service level can be written in elapsed hours or in working hours, and the two are entirely different promises.
Elapsed hours means a clock that runs at nights and weekends, which requires staffing at nights and weekends. Working hours means a clock that stops, which requires nothing extra and is what almost every agreement actually means.
Most agreements say "four hours" and mean the second. The customer reads the first.
Whose working hours
The second ambiguity, and in a cross-border agreement the larger one.
Four working hours on the supplier's calendar may be four days on the customer's. The customer raises a ticket on their Thursday afternoon, which is the end of the supplier's week; the response arrives on the supplier's Sunday, which is the customer's Sunday too but is not a day they work.
The service level has been met and the customer has waited four days.
Writing it so both sides can plan
| Form | What it promises | Honest? |
|---|---|---|
| Within 4 hours | Elapsed, around the clock | Only with 24-hour staffing |
| Within 4 working hours | Stops at nights and weekends | Yes, if whose hours is stated |
| Within 4 working hours, 08:00–17:00 CET, Mon–Fri | Unambiguous | Yes |
| Next working day where received after 15:00 | Unambiguous and realistic | Yes, and easiest to keep |
The third and fourth rows take one more line and remove the entire class of dispute. The customer can see exactly what they are buying and can decide whether it is enough.
What the customer should ask
Three questions before agreeing any response commitment across a border.
- Are those elapsed hours or working hours, and whose?
- What are the covered hours and days, in my time zone?
- What happens to something raised an hour before your week ends?
The third is the one that exposes the real shape of the service. A supplier who has thought about it will have an answer; one who has not will discover the question during the first incident.
What the supplier should offer
The commitment that is easiest to keep and most valued is often not the fastest one.
An acknowledgement within one hour during covered hours, with a stated time for the substantive response, beats a four-hour response commitment that is sometimes four days. The customer's real need is to know when, and acknowledgement is cheap to deliver.
Where coverage genuinely stops at the end of a working day, say so in the agreement and in the automatic reply, with the next covered hour named. A customer who knows the answer comes at 08:00 their Sunday does not escalate on Friday.
Extending coverage without extending hours
Two arrangements that work without anybody sitting up at night.
Shifting the covered window rather than lengthening it: a team starting at 06:00 instead of 08:00 covers an additional two hours of a customer eight hours ahead, at no extra cost, and loses two hours at the end of the day that the customer was not using anyway.
And placing coverage where the customers are, which is the honest version of a follow-the-sun arrangement and the subject of its own note later in this part.
The measurement that matters
Whatever is agreed, measure it on the customer's calendar as well as your own.
Two numbers per ticket — working hours to respond, and calendar hours from the customer's point of view — take no effort to produce and tell two different stories. The first is a measure of the service. The second is a measure of what the customer actually experienced, and it is the one that predicts whether they renew.
What the customer is really buying
Worth stating because it changes what is worth negotiating.
Almost no customer needs a four-hour response. What they need is to know when the response will come, so that they can tell whoever is waiting on them.
A commitment of "next working day, and an acknowledgement within the hour" is more useful to most customers than "four hours" that is sometimes four days, and it is dramatically cheaper for the supplier to deliver reliably.
Negotiations rarely go that way, because the response time is the number on the page and shorter numbers look better. A customer who asks instead for an acknowledgement commitment and a stated covered window is usually buying something more valuable for less money, and almost nobody does it.