This is a subject near and dear to my geek heart (not to mention the
paycheck) so here's my input.
>
>Greetings:
>
>We're debating what is reasonable for a fortune 500 customer to demand from
>a
>high-end firewall vendor in terms of support, and have the following
>questions:
>
>1. What is the reasonable minimum for response time on a support contract?
>
A customer should receive a response within the first 4 hours or so at the
very latest. Customer's with higher grade support should expect a quicker
response time if they don't already have an assigned engineer that they call
directly instead of having to work through the phone tree or front line
engineers. Even if this is nothing more than a "Hello, I'll be working your
case today" message with contact info, this at least gives the customer a
name and number/email address to ping or send updated info to while the
initial research is being done.
>2. What are normal parameters for required escalation to a higher level of
>support?
>
Depending on the structure of the support department, the first support
engineer to work the case will most likey be a Jr. level person that can
answer the easy questions (read FAQ's) with well known answers. If they
can't resolve the issue within the first phone call or first day (once again
depending on the support organization), then it should be escalated to the
next level. This second level group may take more time to research the
problem and collect information from the customer. It should be apparent
within a day or two whether or not the problem is within their ability to
resolve. If not then it should be escalated again to the next level up
(provided that the support org. has more than 2 levels). Usually only the
really quirky problems that hide in the back corner of your attic make it
this far. Stuff only the veterans may have seen or been informed of by the
engineering department, etc.
>3. Is it reasonable to have an absolute contractual deadline for final
>issue
>resolution, and if so, what is a reasonable amount of time for this?
>
I don't think its reasonable to say that any problem will be resolved by a
certain time. I've seen plenty of issues that lasted for months due to
things like needing an upgrade that the vendor has not released yet or the
problem needs to be captured in action and can't be manually triggered. It
is reasonable to expect that a resolution will be provided in a timely
manner (to eliminate the tech support folks that drag ass on getting back to
customers or spend too much time playing Quake instead of researching the
problem) but not an absolute deadline written into the contract.
Hope this helps.
opiesan
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