Service-level agreement
Also known as: SLA, service agreement
A contractual promise about how fast you'll respond, how often you'll visit, or how quickly you'll resolve issues.
A service-level agreement (SLA) is a written commitment to a customer about response time, visit frequency, or resolution time. Common SLAs include "4-hour emergency response," "monthly preventive visits," "24-hour on-site for any outage," or "first-call resolution within 48 hours." SLAs are most common in commercial and recurring service contracts (property management, facility services, IT field support); residential trade businesses use them less often, though warranty windows function similarly.
SLAs matter because they convert vague service expectations into measurable promises. They also show up in field operations as scheduling priorities: an SLA-bound emergency may need to displace a scheduled job, and a missed SLA may require a credit, a refund, or a contract amendment. FSM platforms typically track SLAs at the customer or contract level and surface a warning when a job is approaching SLA breach.
Related terms
Recurring service
Work that repeats on a schedule — weekly, monthly, quarterly — for the same customer at the same site.
Field service management
Software for coordinating work that happens at customer sites — scheduling, dispatch, quotes, invoicing, and crew tracking.
Work order
The structured record of a job to be performed — what's needed, when, where, by whom, and at what price.