The purpose of the service level management practice is to set clear business-based targets for service performance so that the delivery of a service can be properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these targets. This involves gathering and analyzing information from various sources, including customer engagement and feedback, to understand and define the metrics that truly reflect the customer's experience and desired outcomes. This practice ensures a shared understanding of service quality and focuses on what value and experience mean from the customer's perspective.

A. Continual improvement: This practice uses metrics as an input to identify and manage improvement opportunities, but it is not the practice responsible for initially identifying them.

C. Service desk: The service desk is a key source of information about the user experience but its primary purpose is to provide support, not to define service metrics.

D. Problem management: This practice focuses on identifying and managing the causes of incidents to prevent their recurrence, not on defining metrics for customer experience.

1. AXELOS. (2019). ITIL® Foundation

ITIL 4 edition. TSO (The Stationery Office).

Section 5.2.15

"Service level management": "The purpose of the service level management practice is to set clear business-based targets for service performance... SLM requires a focus on and a deep understanding of what is important to customers and users... It involves listening to customers and discovering what value really means to them." (p. 123). This directly supports that SLM identifies metrics reflecting customer experience.

Section 5.1.2

"Continual improvement": Describes the practice's purpose as aligning the organization's practices and services with changing business needs through ongoing improvement. It uses metrics but does not define them from the customer's perspective. (p. 82).

Section 5.2.14

"Service desk": States the purpose is to "capture demand for incident resolution and service requests." It is a source of data for other practices. (p. 121).

Section 5.2.8

"Problem management": Defines the purpose as reducing the "likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents". (p. 111).