When Perfect Uptime Numbers Hide Your Real Service Problems

Key Takeaways:

• Start with Requirements: Document what business teams need before making technical commitments
• Measure Business Outcomes: Track service impact during critical periods rather than generic availability
• Build the Ecosystem: Ensure OLAs and vendor contracts support customer-facing SLA commitments
• Enable Transparency: Make performance visible through dashboards and regular review meetings
• Drive Improvement: Use SLA data to identify patterns and fuel continuous enhancement

Service level agreements (SLAs) promise clarity but often create confusion instead. Numbers like 99.9% uptime look great on paper, yet teams still face service failures that disrupt work. In cases like this, the problem isn't that IT fails to meet these metrics, it's that organizations are measuring the wrong things.

SentinelWave faced this same problem when their CRM consistently met its 99.9% uptime target yet caused daily frustration for the sales team. Slow logins and delayed data syncs during morning order processing disrupted deals even as monthly reports claimed success. IT leaders realized that hitting uptime numbers meant little if performance lagged when it mattered most.

This tension between measurement and meaning appears in many ITIL 4 initiatives. True service level management moves beyond compliance to focus on value.  SentinelWave's experience, as we'll explore, shows what happens when organizations stop measuring what's easy and start measuring what actually drives business outcomes.

Read on to discover how to build SLAs that foster collaboration, measure what matters, and transform service delivery from reactive firefighting to proactive value creation.

The Gap Between Metrics and Reality

Traditional SLA thinking centers on what IT can measure rather than what business teams need to achieve. A 99.9% uptime target may seem reassuring, yet it still allows over eight hours of downtime each year. When those hours occur during critical business periods, the metric loses all practical meaning for users.

Common signs of metric misalignment include:

• Critical Window Blindness: High uptime masks outages during critical business hours
• Speed Over Quality: Response targets ignore resolution quality or user satisfaction
• Performance Gaps: Availability metrics don't account for performance degradation
• One-Size-Fits-All: Generic measurements applied uniformly across different service priorities

During strategic planning, SentinelWave’s VP of Sales described the impact: “We process 60% of our deals between 7 and 10 a.m.,” she said. The IT leadership team realized their SLA focused on total uptime but ignored when reliability mattered most. They agreed that understanding business requirements had to come before defining technical commitments.

Without that alignment, IT would have kept optimizing for the wrong things; improving metrics that didn't solve the business's real problems. ITIL 4 tackles this through value co-creation and the Service Value System, beginning with a crucial step many skip: documenting customer needs before setting technical commitments.

 

Building Agreements on Actual Requirements

Service Level Requirements (SLRs) form the foundation that many organizations skip. SLRs document what customers need to achieve through their services, capturing business expectations before IT makes commitments. This reversal of the typical process prevents the creation of SLAs in a vacuum, based solely on technical capacity.

“We never asked the sales team what they needed,” SentinelWave’s CIO admitted. The group planned workshops with each business unit to document real requirements before revising SLAs. Early discussions showed clear differences, as customer service relied on late-day access to case data while sales needed morning reliability.

Four components of the SLA ecosystem:

• Service Level Requirements (SLRs): Capture customer needs and expectations
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Make customer-facing commitments based on SLRs
• Operational Level Agreements (OLAs): Define internal handoffs between IT teams
• Underpinning Contracts (UCs): Cover vendor dependencies and third-party commitments

Each layer supports the others, creating a system where everyone understands their role in delivering value. Once this foundation is in place, teams can focus on what matters most: choosing metrics that reflect genuine business impact.

Measuring What Matters Most

The move from generic metrics to context-specific ones aligns with ITIL 4’s focus on value. Strong SLAs measure business results, not just technical inputs. For example, email availability during critical hours matters more than total uptime, and delivery speed during peak times says more about quality than daily averages.

SentinelWave’s operations director noted their metrics didn’t reflect peak demand. “What if we tracked responsiveness from 7 to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday?” she suggested. The team considered adding measures for page load speed, data sync reliability, and user feedback to better capture business impact.

Examples of business-aligned metrics include:

• Peak Window Availability: Email access during critical business windows instead of a 24/7 average
• Transaction Success Rates: Completion rates during peak periods rather than system uptime
• Workflow Quality Scores: User-reported service quality tied to specific workflows
• Verified Resolution Time: Time-to-resolution, including user verification, not just ticket closure

Evolving from technical to business-aligned metrics requires collaboration. Business units define success, and IT translates those goals into measurable commitments. These conversations build shared understanding that strengthens SLAs before they’re even implemented.

Segmenting services by priority and risk ensures critical functions get the right focus. Not every system needs the same level of support, and uniform commitments waste resources. Core business services deserve tighter SLAs and faster response times than occasional administrative tools. Yet, even stronger metrics can overlook what matters most: the user experience at critical moments.

Experience Beyond Simple Availability

Many organizations adopting ITIL 4 realize traditional SLAs overlook key aspects of service quality. Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) extend this thinking by focusing on user experience, context, and emotional response. Though not officially part of ITIL 4, XLAs complement service level management by emphasizing value and usability.

During the session, SentinelWave’s director of customer experience shared user complaints about the CRM. “Our teams say it feels unreliable, even when it’s technically up,” she said. The group agreed that availability alone missed key factors and planned to explore experience-based measures to capture responsiveness and usability during critical workflows.

XLAs measure aspects that traditional SLAs miss:

• High-Stakes Reliability: Perceived reliability during critical moments
• Stress-Period Usability: Ease of use during high-pressure situations
• Workflow Alignment: Service timing matches workflow expectations
• Service Confidence: Emotional response and trust in service consistency

For SentinelWave's email service, an XLA might specify that users can reliably access email during business-critical hours with minimal delay and predictable performance. These commitments acknowledge that service quality extends beyond simple availability.

This distinction is critical for hybrid and software as a service (SaaS)-based services, where users expect consumer-grade performance and seamless integration. Uptime is now the baseline, but real value comes from meeting experience expectations. Achieving that means avoiding common pitfalls that derail even well-intentioned SLA efforts.

Avoiding the Traps That Undermine Trust

SLA failures often come from design flaws, not technical limits. Overly ambitious targets set teams up for repeated misses, eroding credibility. At the same time, vague commitments leave IT and business teams defining success differently. Both extremes weaken the trust SLAs are meant to build.

Common SLA pitfalls to avoid:

• Unrealistic Targets: Overly aggressive commitments that consistently fail and erode trust
• Vague Language: Ambiguous terms that allow conflicting interpretations
• Speed Over Resolution: Measuring only ticket closure, encouraging premature resolution
• Static Agreements: Fixed commitments that can't adapt to changing needs
• Hidden Performance: Concealing data instead of sharing transparently with stakeholders

As the conversation continued, the service desk manager raised another concern. “If we only measure ticket closure time, technicians might close cases before users are satisfied,” he warned. The team recognized the risk of encouraging shortcuts instead of improvement and agreed to include user satisfaction checks and post-resolution verification in their next SLA draft.

Governance issues can be just as damaging. SLAs treated as static documents drift out of alignment as services and business priorities change. Without regular review, they become anchors that hold back progress rather than tools that enable it.

Transparency and accountability require shared visibility. Real-time dashboards help both IT and business stakeholders clearly see performance. At the same time, review meetings create space to discuss trends and drive improvements. When visibility meets adaptability, SLAs evolve from compliance checklists into engines of continuous improvement.

Connecting SLAs to Continuous Improvement

ITIL 4’s Continual Improvement practice depends on accurate, actionable data about service performance. SLAs supply that insight while ensuring accountability for how it’s used. Each missed target should prompt analysis to uncover root causes and drive meaningful improvement. Simply apologizing for performance gaps wastes the valuable lessons service failures can reveal.

Later in the meeting, SentinelWave’s CIO reflected on their past performance gaps. “Each missed target showed where we were reacting instead of improving,” he noted. To shift that pattern, the team outlined a plan for monthly reviews to analyze recurring CRM issues, log improvement actions in their CSI register, and track how those actions influenced future service levels.

Including improvement targets directly in SLAs makes evolution visible and measurable. Commitments (e.g., such as reducing high-priority incidents by 20% over six months) show stakeholders that service management aims for continuous progress.

The improvement cycle follows a clear pattern:

• Breach Analysis: SLA failures trigger incident reviews that identify root problems
• Initiative Logging: Problems generate improvement actions logged in the CSI register
• Capability Enhancement: Initiatives lead to updated SLAs or improved service capabilities
• Results Validation: Monitoring confirms improvements and identifies the next focus area

This systematic approach turns SLAs into catalysts for ongoing learning and progress. By using performance data to identify patterns, act on insights, and measure results, organizations embed continual improvement into daily operations and keep service delivery aligned with evolving business needs.

Making Promises Worth Keeping

Service level agreements become collaborative when they reflect real business needs instead of arbitrary technical targets. This shift from checkbox compliance to genuine partnership helps organizations turn SLAs into tools for improvement rather than sources of conflict.

Eight months later, SentinelWave’s leaders met to review progress. CRM responsiveness during key sales hours improved by 40%, and user satisfaction rose steadily. Sales reported smoother deal processing, customer service saw fewer delays, and IT and business now worked toward shared goals.

This evolution from conflict to collaboration demonstrates what is possible when organizations systematically apply ITIL 4's service-level management principles. Leaders who master these practices position their teams to deliver genuine value while building the trust that sustains long-term success.

Strengthen Your Service Management Foundation

Service level agreements work best when they reflect a genuine understanding between IT and business stakeholders. ITIL 4 practices provide the framework for building that understanding and transforming SLAs from compliance documents into tools for delivering value.

New Horizons offers comprehensive ITIL 4 training that empowers IT leaders and their teams to elevate service management. Equip your organization with the skills to build smarter SLAs, strengthen collaboration, and deliver measurable business value through continuous improvement.