Robot after-sales SLA in North America: what robot makers should promise US and Canadian customers
Short answer: a robot after-sales SLA for US and Canadian customers should not be a single "4-hour response" promise. Define five clocks (acknowledgement, remote diagnosis, on-site arrival, restore, permanent fix), make only the first three binding, time them in the robot's local business hours and holidays, tier spare parts by location, and pay misses in service credits.
This guide is for overseas service and after-sales leads at robot makers (many of them in China) whose first North American customers are asking for an SLA, and for North American buyers who want to know what a credible one looks like. It covers how to define each clock, how to grade robot faults, timing rules and local holidays, whether to promise uptime, spare-parts tiers, service credits, exclusions and the back-to-back SLA with your local field partner.
Where we stand: KeepRobots is a robot field service company in Vancouver. In an SLA, we are the part that turns up on site and fixes the robot. This is our practical view, not legal advice; have a lawyer review any contract wording.
An SLA is five clocks, not one number
When a customer asks "what's your response time?", their legal and procurement teams really want five answers. Each clock needs a defined start and stop, otherwise you and the customer will measure the same ticket two different ways.
| Clock | Starts when | Stops when (met) | Who mainly owns it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | The customer reports through the agreed channel (ticket portal, support email, phone) and a ticket number is created | A person replies: confirms receipt, assigns a severity, states the next step | Local first line (L1) or on-call |
| Remote diagnosis | After acknowledgement, once the customer has given remote access or logs | A first diagnosis: can it be fixed remotely, does someone need to go, which parts are likely needed | Factory second line (L2) + L1 |
| On-site arrival | You (or your partner) decide to dispatch and the customer confirms an access window | A technician is on site and checked in | Local field service partner |
| Restore | On arrival (or when remote work starts) | The robot's main function is back, possibly via a workaround: swap unit, degraded mode, alternate route | On site + remote |
| Permanent fix | After restore | Root cause dealt with: part replaced, firmware fixed, verified, ticket closed | Manufacturer (parts, R&D) |
- Response is not resolution. Most SLAs a robot maker can actually keep make the first three clocks binding, give "restore" a target, and give "permanent fix" a process (for example, a written update every business day). A "4-hour fix" is realistic only where there is a resident engineer and a spare unit on site.
- Write remote diagnosis as its own clock. Many robot faults (parameters, maps, network, firmware) can be solved remotely, and a factory team in Asia can work on them overnight North American time. "A diagnosis before the next business day starts" is more convincing to a buyer than a vague "24-hour response".
How to grade robot faults: P1 to P4
Severity decides which column of clocks applies. Grade by impact on the customer's operation, not by how hard the fault is to fix. A workable scheme for service, cleaning and delivery robot fleets:
| Severity | Definition (customer impact) | Robot examples |
|---|---|---|
| P1 Critical | Core operation stopped, no workaround | Whole fleet cannot be dispatched; the only delivery robot is down and deliveries stop; a robot arm stops a production line |
| P2 High | Some robots or functions down; work continues in degraded mode | One robot in a fleet down; cannot use the elevator, so single-floor only; charging dock fault, manual charging needed |
| P3 Medium | Fault that does not affect today's work | Missed edges in cleaning; inaccurate reports; intermittent alarms |
| P4 Low | Questions, configuration changes, training | Map edits, new task points, training new staff |
Keep safety incidents out of SLA timing. For a collision that injures someone, an e-stop that fails or a battery that smokes, the clause should say: the customer stops and isolates the robot, you contact the customer within an agreed time, and the robot stays out of service until the cause is understood. Putting safety incidents on a "restore within X hours" clock rewards people on site for taking risks to hit the number.
Also state who sets the severity: the customer proposes it when reporting, you may adjust it at acknowledgement according to the written definitions, and the contract definitions decide any dispute. Without this, every ticket arrives as P1.
Timing rules: start, pause, time zone, business days
Most SLA disputes are not about the number of hours but about when the clock runs. Rules worth writing into the contract:
- Start: when the agreed channel creates a ticket number. A message to a salesperson's personal phone or email does not start the clock (but say that it will be moved into the ticket system when received).
- Pause: time spent waiting on the customer does not count: no site access or a rescheduled visit, IT has not yet approved remote access, waiting for the customer to confirm a test, or the site is not workable (power outage, construction, elevator out of service).
- Time zone: always the robot's local time, not the factory's time and not your North American office's time. Vancouver and Toronto are three hours apart in summer and, once BC stops changing its clocks, two hours apart in winter, so a Canada-wide contract has to say which applies. British Columbia also stops changing its clocks from 1 November 2026 (permanent daylight time), so in winter Vancouver will be one hour ahead of Seattle and California. Cross-border contracts should account for that.
- Business hours: spell them out, for example "Monday to Friday, 8:00–17:00 local time at the robot's site, excluding statutory holidays". Offer 24/7 only on the severities you actually staff.
- Holidays: use the statutory holidays of the province or state where the robot is, not a generic "North American holidays" list. The differences are real:
| Date (2026) | British Columbia | Ontario | US federal holidays |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Sep, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation | Statutory holiday | Not a public holiday | — |
| 12 Oct | Thanksgiving (statutory holiday) | Thanksgiving (public holiday) | Columbus Day |
| 11 Nov | Remembrance Day (statutory holiday) | Not a public holiday | Veterans Day |
| 26 Nov | — | — | Thanksgiving (US) |
| 26 Dec, Boxing Day | Not a statutory holiday | Public holiday | — |
British Columbia has 11 statutory holidays in 2026, Ontario's Employment Standards Act lists 9 public holidays, and there are 11 US federal holidays (official lists in the sources below). Canadian and US Thanksgiving are six weeks apart. Holidays at the factory (Chinese New Year, National Day week) are not North American holidays and should not appear in the customer SLA, but they do affect second-line support and parts shipments, so cover them in your internal on-call plan instead.
A sample SLA you can actually keep
Here is a sample for a common setup: a local field service partner, a small local stock of spare parts, and second-line support at the factory. The numbers are illustrative. Before you sign, confirm in writing what your service partner can commit to, and leave a margin.
| Clock | P1 | P2 | P3 / P4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | 2 business hours | 4 business hours | Next business day |
| Remote diagnosis | Before the start of the next business day | Within 1 business day | Within 3 business days |
| On-site arrival (core service area) | Next business day after dispatch decision | Within 2 business days | Scheduled |
| On-site arrival (outside core area) | Agreed per region, with a city list | Same | Scheduled |
| Restore | Target only, no service credit | Target only | — |
| Permanent fix | Written update every business day until closed | Weekly update | Weekly update |
The table deliberately avoids the usual overpromises: "4-hour on-site", "24/7", "same arrival time anywhere in North America" and "fixed within X hours". They are not impossible, but each needs paid-for resources: resident staff, shifts, multiple cities, spare units. If a customer wants them, sell a premium tier and price it separately.
Write arrival times by region. North America is too big for one number: "on site within 24 hours" means one thing in downtown Vancouver and something else at a mine in northern BC. Attach a list of cities or postal-code ranges: the core service area, areas with travel charges, and areas that get remote support plus shipped parts only.
Should you promise uptime?
North American buyers, especially IT and procurement teams used to SaaS contracts, will ask for an uptime guarantee. Here is what the percentages allow, using about 730 hours in a month:
| Monthly uptime | Downtime allowed per month | What it means for a robot |
|---|---|---|
| 99.9% | About 44 minutes | One site visit breaks it; not realistic for robots |
| 99% | About 7.3 hours | One overnight wait for a part breaks it |
| 98% | About 14.6 hours | Possible per robot with local spares and next-business-day arrival |
| 95% | About 36.5 hours | Usually realistic with a local service partner and common spares stocked locally |
- For pilots and the first year, promise clocks, not uptime. Much robot downtime comes from the site: floors, Wi-Fi, elevators, access control, a changed layout. An uptime number puts all of that on you.
- If the customer insists, pin down the definition: per fleet or per robot; what "available" means (able to do the agreed task, not just powered on); exclusions for planned maintenance, customer-caused downtime, safety stops and force majeure; monthly or quarterly measurement. Fleet-level, quarterly measurement smooths out a lot of noise.
- Tie uptime to spares. State that the uptime commitment assumes the local spare parts list in a named schedule is in stock.
Spare parts SLA: three tiers
A fast arrival does not help if the part is overseas. Do not write one number for parts; tier them by where they are kept:
| Tier | Typical parts | What you can commit to |
|---|---|---|
| On site or held at the customer | Consumables: brushes, side brushes, filters, tires, fuses | Replaced during the visit |
| Local stock (at your service partner) | Common field-replaceable units: drive wheels, lidar, batteries, main boards, chargers | Brought by the technician, or delivered next business day |
| Shipped from the factory | Low-turnover, large or unit-level parts | A process, not a number of days: shipped within X business days of fault confirmation, with a tracking number; customs time excluded |
Say explicitly that customs time is excluded for the factory tier. The US has ended duty-free de minimis treatment (from May 2025 for mainland China and Hong Kong, and for all countries from the end of August 2025), so even small parts now go through customs entry and pay any applicable duties, and timing is harder to predict. For what to keep locally, see what to stock for a ten-robot cleaning fleet and consignment spare parts stock in Canada.
One more line: local stock must match the hardware and firmware revisions of the robots in the field. A part that arrives and doesn't fit wastes a visit.
Service credits: what happens when you miss
The usual North American remedy is not a penalty but a service credit: a percentage off the next invoice. Cloud SLAs are a good model. AWS's EC2 instance-level SLA, for example, credits 10% if monthly uptime falls below 99.5%, 30% below 99%, and 100% below 95%, and the customer must claim by the end of the second billing cycle after the incident or get nothing.
For a robot service contract:
- Credit against service fees, not the hardware price. Use the monthly or annual service fee as the base and a fixed percentage per miss.
- Cap it, for example total credits per month cannot exceed a set share of that month's fee. Without a cap, one bad month can wipe out a year of service margin.
- Make credits the sole remedy, with a right for the customer to terminate the service contract after repeated serious misses. Have a lawyer write this clause.
- Credits must be claimed within a stated period, with ticket numbers.
- Only binding clocks earn credits (acknowledgement, diagnosis, arrival), not targets such as restore.
If you don't charge a recurring service fee yet (hardware only, free service under warranty), use extended warranty, free visits or free parts instead. Don't promise cash compensation when there is no service revenue behind it. How warranty, RMA and repair costs are usually split is covered in robot warranty and RMA in North America.
Exclusions and who is responsible
An SLA should only cover what you control. These are usually excluded or pause the clock; agree them line by line before signing:
- Site conditions: floor works, Wi-Fi or network changes, elevator and access-control faults, the customer moving chargers or changing the layout.
- Unauthorized modification, repair or firmware, or non-genuine consumables.
- Normal wear of consumables (billed as consumables).
- The customer's third-party systems: their WMS, building systems, door and elevator interfaces.
- Force majeure and delays outside your control such as freight and customs (put this in the parts clause).
- Sites outside the agreed service area, and after-hours visits requested by the customer (possible, billed separately).
Also state that the manufacturer (or its North American distributor) owns the SLA to the customer, and the field partner is your subcontractor. The customer does not need to see your internal split, but you need a tighter SLA with your partner.
Back-to-back: give your partner a tighter SLA than you give the customer
The most common mistake: promising the customer next-business-day arrival and signing exactly the same with the service partner. Dispatch approval, booking a time with the customer, a technician finishing another job: any half-day slip anywhere and you are in breach. A better structure:
| Term | You to the customer | Partner to you |
|---|---|---|
| Arrival (core area, P1) | Next business day after dispatch decision | Confirms the work order the same day; on site the next business morning |
| Ticket records | Monthly SLA report | Each ticket updated the same day: arrival time, work done, photos, serial numbers of replaced parts |
| Spare parts | Three tiers as above | Local stock list, monthly count, same-day usage report |
| Credits | Percentage of service fee | Can mirror the percentage, but don't expect to pass all customer credits through |
Outsource the work, not the responsibility. What to check in a partner before you rely on them is in our robot service partner checklist; when outsourcing makes sense versus hiring is in should a robot startup outsource field service?
Monthly SLA report
An SLA nobody reads until something goes wrong works against the manufacturer. Send a one-page report every month; at renewal it is your evidence. Include:
- Tickets this month by severity and site
- Attainment for each clock, with every miss listed and its cause (including customer-caused pauses)
- Share of tickets solved remotely (this shows the value of the factory team)
- Parts replaced and remaining local stock
- Repeat faults (same robot twice within 30 days) and what is being done about them
- Planned maintenance for next month
What on-site SLA coverage costs per visit
Most of an SLA's cost is the on-site part. At KeepRobots' current published rates, before tax: diagnostic $200 CAD per robot, per visit in Canada or $200 USD in the US, credited against an approved repair; call-out $100 CAD per visit in the Greater Vancouver core area; on-site labour $150 CAD per hour in Canada or $150 USD per hour in the US. Travel outside the core area and for US projects is quoted per project.
Example: a P1 visit in the Greater Vancouver core area, repair approved after diagnosis, two hours on site: $100 call-out + 2 × $150 labour = $400 CAD (diagnostic credited), before parts and tax. A manufacturer can budget "expected visits per year × cost per visit" and then decide whether to bill the customer per visit, bundle it into an annual service fee, or include it in warranty.
Premium commitments (standby windows, faster arrival, a resident technician) have a different cost structure and need a project quote. Don't promise a premium SLA on per-visit pricing.
SLA checklist before you sign
- ☐ Start and stop defined for all five clocks
- ☐ Severity defined by customer impact; who sets it is stated
- ☐ Safety incidents handled outside SLA timing
- ☐ Timing in the robot's local time, business hours stated to the hour
- ☐ Holidays by province or state, with the list attached
- ☐ Pause conditions listed
- ☐ Arrival times by city or region in a schedule
- ☐ Uptime: not promised, or with a fixed definition and preconditions
- ☐ Three spare-parts tiers; factory tier as a process, customs excluded
- ☐ Service credits: base, percentage, cap, claim period, sole remedy
- ☐ Exclusions
- ☐ Partner SLA one notch tighter than the customer SLA
- ☐ Monthly report format agreed
Common mistakes
- Marketing copy in the contract: "24/7 response" on the website ends up word for word in the customer's contract schedule.
- Timing in factory time: the home team logs tickets in its own time zone, the customer counts in theirs, and every ticket is a day off.
- One arrival time everywhere: "48-hour on-site anywhere in Canada", and the first ticket comes from a city with no partner.
- Uptime per robot, per month: one wait for a part triggers credits for the whole month.
- No pause rule: the customer won't allow weekend access and the ticket keeps counting.
- No reports: at renewal the customer only remembers the slowest repair.
What KeepRobots can do
KeepRobots is a robot field service company based in Vancouver, starting from Greater Vancouver and able to travel to the rest of Canada and the US. We don't make or sell robots and are not an exclusive agent for any brand. We can be the on-site part of your SLA: dispatch and arrival on agreed terms, same-day ticket records with photos and part serials, spare parts and consignment stock held in Vancouver, and working alongside your factory team on remote diagnosis. We work in English and Mandarin, read Chinese technical documents and can work with your home team's hours.
See robot after-sales and field service in North America for coverage and services. If you'd like a second opinion on an SLA draft, write to partners@keeprobots.com or use the contact page.
FAQ
What should a robot after-sales SLA include?
Five clocks: acknowledgement, remote diagnosis, on-site arrival, restore and permanent fix, each with a defined start and stop. Make the first three binding and the basis for service credits, give restore a target, and give permanent fix a progress-update process. Add P1–P4 severity by customer impact, timing rules, spare-parts tiers, credits and exclusions.
Should SLA times use the manufacturer's time zone or the customer's?
The robot's local time. State business hours exactly (for example Monday to Friday, 8:00–17:00 local time) and use the statutory holidays of the province or state where the robot is. BC and Ontario holidays differ, and Canadian and US Thanksgiving fall on different dates.
Should a robot maker promise 99% uptime?
Not for pilots or the first year. At about 730 hours a month, 99% allows only about 7.3 hours of downtime, so one overnight wait for a part breaks it. If a customer insists, define fleet or per-robot, monthly or quarterly, what counts as available, what is excluded, and make it conditional on a local spare parts list.
How do you write an SLA for spare parts?
Tier by where parts are kept. Consumables stocked on site are replaced during the visit; common field-replaceable units held locally come with the technician or arrive the next business day; parts shipped from the factory get a process (ship within X business days, tracking number) rather than a number of days, with customs time excluded.
What happens when a robot SLA is missed?
The common North American approach is a service credit: a percentage off the next service invoice, capped per month, claimed by the customer within a set period and stated as the sole remedy (have a lawyer review). Without a service fee, offer extended warranty or free visits instead of cash.
How much does an on-site robot service visit cost in Vancouver?
At KeepRobots' published rates, before tax: $100 CAD call-out in the Greater Vancouver core area plus $150 CAD per hour on site, with the $200 CAD diagnostic credited when the repair is approved. A two-hour repair comes to about $400 CAD before parts and tax. This is an example, not a quote.
Sources
- AWS, Amazon EC2 Service Level Agreement (credit tiers and claim deadline): aws.amazon.com
- Government of B.C., statutory holidays in B.C.: gov.bc.ca
- Government of Ontario, Your guide to the Employment Standards Act: public holidays: ontario.ca
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management, federal holidays: opm.gov
- Government of B.C., permanent daylight saving time (news release 2026AG0013-000209): news.gov.bc.ca
- The White House, ending de minimis for China and Hong Kong (Executive Order 14256, effective 2 May 2025): whitehouse.gov
- The White House, suspending de minimis for all countries (Executive Order 14324, effective 29 August 2025): whitehouse.gov
SLA numbers on this page are illustrative examples, not measured data. KeepRobots rates are current published rates and may change; taxes, parts and travel outside the core area are extra. Holiday and regulatory information is as of 2026-10-21. This is not legal advice.