Support Policies Management Process

Modified 21/09/2023

1. Ticket Lifecycle

Ticket Reporting

• Designated contact persons (requesters) from the customer side having pre-configured profiles on Customer Support Portal can raise tickets using any of the below channels:
• The requester should have the following information ready at the time of logging the ticket at the Customer Support Portal in order to assist the support staff in providing a faster resolution.
  • DD Product and Module with Version Number.
  • Full description of the ticket including specific information like symptom, steps to re-produce the issue, and troubleshooting diagnostic steps taken.
  • Diagnostic information like screenshots, error messages, logs, trace files, etc.
  • Environment changes like network changes or upgrades, recent configuration changes, or new implemented change requests.
  • Business impact.
  • Ticket number (if it is related to an existing ticket)
• Customer can raise tickets electronically by sending an e-mail to support@datdyn.com or can contact us at +1 (201) 429 0733.
• Upon receiving an e-mail or a phone call, the DD Customer Success Engineer logs the ticket into Customer Portal which assigns a unique reference number.
• The customer uses this unique reference number when communicating and following-up with Data Dynamics about that specific ticket.
• An automatic notification e-mail from Customer Portal will be sent to the requester’s e-mail containing the unique reference number.

Ticket Handling

• DD Support process for ticket management is fully compliant with ITIL best practices.
• Once a ticket has been logged at the Customer Portal, it is classified and assigned an appropriate priority and severity according to pre-defined criteria.
• Initial response by the support engineer will follow the guidelines for the customer’s support Service Level Agreement (SLA). Response can be by phone, E-mail, or through Customer Portal.
• Customer Success Engineer is capable of initially investigating and collecting requirements of tickets and resolving tickets (if possible).
• In few cased where it’s feature request, a systematic process ensures that tickets are functionally escalated immediately to product management team for expert advice and assistance.
• Customer Success Engineer is assigned to the ticket and owns the ticket until it is mutually agreed with the customer that the ticket is resolved.
• The assigned Customer Success engineer may contact the requester phone, e-mail, or through Zoom meeting during the resolution process. The customer responsibility is to have the appropriate people and resources available to work with the support engineer during the service hours defined in the customer’s support Service Level Agreement (SLA).
• The assigned support engineer will work with the requester to try to resolve the issue, taking whatever steps necessary to first fully diagnose the issue and then to find a solution. This may involve:
  • Asking the re quester for more information.
  • Asking the re quester for specific logs and/or debug data from the system.
  • Asking the re quester to install specific software and/or patches.
  • Trying to re produce the issue on test environments in lab
  • Asking the requester to implement and test workaround suggestions that may avoid the issue.
  • Asking the requester to involve application, network, database, or other technology specific administrators to help in troubleshooting.
  • Working with the requester to involve relevant 3rd party vendors if DD suspects an issue in their product or infrastructure

Ticket Progress Update

• The requester receives an automatic notification e-mail from Customer Portal for every change in the ticket status, every change in the assignment, or addition of new work information.
• The requester can check the status of his reported ticket (s) either by calling or emailing the Customer Success Engineer
• The requester can add new work information and/or upload files to his ticket at any time.

Ticket on Hold

• DD Customer Success Engineer may hold work on ticket on the following conditions:
  • Waiting the re quester to provide more information.
  • Waiting the requester to provide specific logs and/or debug data from the system.
  • Waiting the re quester to install specific software and/or patches.
  • Waiting the requester to implement and test workaround suggestions that may avoid the issue.
  • Waiting the requester confirmation for cancellation if the ticket is out of the support scope.
• Customer Success Engineer will keep following up with the requester by phone and/or e-mail on a daily basis on “Pending” tickets.
• Customer Success Engineer will escalate to the customer focal points according to a pre-set schedule defined by DD policies in case there is no response from the tickets’ requesters.

Ticket Resolution

• The ticket can be resolved when a resolution or a work-around to restore the service has been determined and tested by DD and is awaiting customer validation.

Ticket Closure

• Once a ticket has been resolved to the satisfaction of the customer, the Customer Success Engineer will close the ticket after confirmation with the requester.
• Customer Success Engineer will close the ticket in Customer Portal after 3 follow ups with the requested or if no feedback is received from the requester.

Ticket Re-Open

• Once a ticket has been resolved but not to the satisfaction of the customer, the Customer Success Engineer will re-open the ticket after confirmation with the requester.

Ticket Cancellation

• The ticket can be cancelled after confirmation with the requester in the following cases:
  • The customer is not entitled for support service.
  • The ticket is invalid/duplicate from an existing ticket.
  • The customer resolves the ticket on his own without DD involvement.
• The ticket can be cancelled automatically if the requester does not provide required information for long period of time or after 3 follow up policy.

 

2. Ticket Status Life Cycle:

At any point in time, the ticket will have a status value (according to the following table) which indicates, in general terms, the point in DD life cycle that a ticket has reached.

Status	Description
New	Indicates ticket has not been assigned or started investigation yet
Under Investigation	The assigned Customer Success Engineer is investigating, analyzing logs, trying to reproduce, determining next steps, formulating communication with customer, etc.
Waiting on Customer	For the ticket diagnosis to proceed further it needs additional information from the customer. This may include log files, screen shots, error descriptions, configuration files, etc. Support may have also provided guidance or steps for the customer to take and is awaiting feedback on the results.
Waiting on Developer	Support is requesting assistance from development team. It may include deeper diagnostic effort, bug fixing etc.
Pending Release	Waiting on a software release with fixed bug to address the issue and no other workaround in place. If there is a workaround that customer is satisfied with, you can close the case.
Resolved	The issue has been fixed, work around provided, questions answered to the customer’s satisfaction
Cancelled	The customer or Customer Success Engineer chose to abandon this case and thus can be disregarded

 

3. Operational Definitions

Acknowledgment Time

The time elapsed between the ticket submit time till a Customer Success Engineer assigns the ticket to himself and owns the ticket.

This acknowledgment confirms that the ticket has been received by one of the Service Desk and it is being evaluated and forwarded to the appropriate support group.

Response Time

The time elapsed between the ticket submit time till a support engineer starts working towards ticket resolution excluding all pending times.

Resolution Time

The time elapsed between the ticket submit time till a support engineer resolves the ticket excluding all pending times.

4. Priority & SLA Definitions

The priority of an Incident is based on the impact and the urgency. Impact is the ‘pain’ to the business. Impact may relate to the number of users impacted, the potential financial loss to the organization, and the security risk.

Urgency relates to how quickly the business requires the Incident to be resolved. Target resolution times will have been allocated to each Priority level. These will have been agreed with the business and recorded in the SLA.

• Priority level is assigned to the ticket once the ticket is received by DD according to pre-defined criteria.
• At any point in time, the customer can request the Customer Success Engineer to increase or decrease the priority of the ticket if the business impact of the ticket has changed, or it was not initially correctly recorded
• The priority will be determined automatically from urgency (defined by Customer) and impact (defined by DD).

High

Impact	Description
Business/Financial Exposure	The service failure creates a critical business/financial exposure
Work Outage	Complete, critical loss of functionality of system causes complete service outage. The client is not able to work or perform some significant portion of the job.
Number of Affected Clients/Subscribers	The service failure affects a large number of clients/subscribers
Workaround	There is no acceptable workaround to the ticket
Security/Regulatory Violation	Any security breaching or vulnerability potential for breaching.

Medium

Impact	Description
Business/Financial Exposure	The service failure creates a major business/financial exposure
Work Outage	Partial, loss of functionality of system causes partial service outage. The client is unable to perform small portion of the job, but still able to perform most of the job.
Number of Affected Clients/Subscribers	The service failure affects a small number of clients /subscribers
Workaround	There may or may not be an acceptable workaround to the ticket

Low

Impact	Description
Business/Financial Exposure	The service failure creates low business/financial exposure
Work Outage	Technical question/clarification of functionality of system or cosmetic issues causes no service outage. The client is still able to perform most of the job.
Number of Affected Clients/Subscribers	The service failure affects a small number of clients /subscribers
Workaround	There may or may not be an acceptable workaround to the ticket

SLA Definitions

Priority	SLA Response Time	SLA Resolution time	Description
High	15 minutes	4 Hours	Critical Business Impact: i) Loss of critical system or function ii) Permanent or temporary unavailability in critical system or function iii) Situation related to the software, which stop customer work process
Medium	30 minutes	8 Hours	Major Business Impact: i) Reduction of availability in non-critical system or function ii) Situation related to the software that delays work process for single users and may be worked around
Low	30 minutes	24 Hours	Minimal Business Impact: i) Request for modifications ii) Situations with small customer impact iii) Cosmetic changes, Good to have features

 

5. High Priority Tickets Handling and Notification

• High Priority tickets require the customer to have dedicated resources available to work on the issue on an ongoing bas is and be reachable during the hours defined by the customer’s support Service Level Agreement (SLA).
• The notification of any High Priority  tickets will be sent by e-mail to the eligible stakeholders according to specified events and milestones.
• Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is provided by the assigned Support Engineer within maximum 1 day after resolution.
• High Priority tickets that remains “Pending” on the requester for 24 continuous hours, are downgraded automatically to Medium Priority after reminding the requester.

 

6. Escalation

• DD always works to ensure that the appropriate resources and level of focus are applied to the customer’s ticket to ensure a timely resolution.
• The escalation process is appropriate whenever the customer is not satisfied with the progress of the ticket and needs to communicate an improper handling of a ticket to DD support management.
• By invoking the escalation process, additional levels of DD support management attention, procedure reinforcement, and resource prioritization are brought to bear on resolving the customer’s ticket.

Escalation Reporting

• The customer can initiate the escalation process on an existing ticket using any of the below channels:

E-Mail Access:

• Customer can escalate electronically by sending an e -mail to email Ids mentioned in Escalation matrix

Telephone Access:

• Customer can call the numbers mentioned in Escalation matrix as per respective levels.

Escalation Matrix

Level	Owner	Designation	Email Id	Contact No.	Escalation (High)	Escalation (Medium)	Escalation (Low)
L1	Data Dynamics Support	DD Support	support@datdyn.com	+1 (201) 429 0733	0 Hours	0 Hours	0 Hours
L2	Dipankar Ghosh	DD Support Lead	dipankar.ghosh@datdyn.com	+1 (201) 548 9067	1 Hours	2 Hours	6 Hours
L3	Bartley Gilbert	Director of Support	bartley.gilbert@datdyn.com	+44 (744) 949 9648	2 Hours	4 Hours	12 Hours
L4	Luis Gutierrez	COO	luis.gutierrez@datdyn.com	NA	3 Hours	6 Hours	18 Hours

Escalation Handling

• Upon receiving an escalation notification, DD escalation management unit will validate the escalation, evaluate the situation, and will involve the appropriate DD support management level to ensure proper rectification for the escalated ticket.
• DD escalation management unit together with the appropriate DD support management level will work to outline a rectification action plan for the escalated ticket.
• DD escalation management unit with raise the escalation to DD higher management according to a pre-set schedule.

Escalation Update

• DD escalation management Unit will work with the customer to determine a communication plan.
• According to the ticket status, agreement will be made on the frequency of the update and communication mode (e-mail, phone)
• DD escalation management Unit will be updating the escalation’s initiator regularly about the progress of the rectification action plan.

Escalation Closure

• Once the escalated ticket is rectified, the escalation can be set to closed.
• DD escalation management unit will ensure the following tasks are completed prior to closing the escalation:
  • Get the escalation’s initiator approval on the rectification plan.
  • Document all escalation details.

7. Reporting

DD will provide the customer focal points with a reporting portal in CRM, where the management will have access to the following reports:

• All Tickets
• Customer Services Metrics Report
• Summary of Critical Tickets on Intranet Portal
• Weekly Report on All open tickets
• Monthly Report with SLA metrics & graphs
• Quarterly Report on Support defined KPIs

 

8. Support Service Review Meetings

• Support service review meetings are scheduled with the big customers every Month, 3 Months, or 6 Months according to the volume of tickets reported by the customer.
• The purpose is to ensure that DD and the customers have an opportunity to assess service performance with respect to technical aspects, process aspects, systems aspect, and SLA, in addition to identifying opportunities for improvement.
• The scope includes, but not limited to:
  • Review on the performance against the customer’s support Service Level Agreement (SLA).
  • Outstanding issues.
  • Areas for improvement.
• The participants include:
  • Customer Focal Points and/or Managed Services Management
  • Global Head of Support
  • Sales Account Managers
  • Vice President – Customer Success
  • Chief Operation Officer

 

9. Customer Roles and Responsibilities

Customer Focal Point(s)

• Facilitate connection requirements.
• Allocate authorized requesters to open tickets.
• Attend service review meetings.
• Act as a point of escalation.

Requester(s)

• Uses DD Support Service Desk as Single Point of Contact (SPOC).
• Logs the ticket including all necessary information.
• Provide any data needed from the production environment.
• Implement bug fixes and patches on production environment. Confirms resolution and closure, or cancellation of tickets.

 

10. DD Support Roles and Responsibilities

Global Support Team

• Responsible for the 24×7 Customer support of the Unified Unstructured Data Management Platform
• Proactively reach out/follow up to customers for open tickets and resolution
• Investigate, Diagnose and provide resolution of tickets
• Functional escalation to other support groups or 3rd party vendors.
• Proactively reach out to customers for product upgrades and hotfixes
• Create SOPs and checklists for all modules of Unified Unstructured Data Management Platform and share with SE/Partner Teams
• Update CRM Portal regularly with case updates and resolution
• Update KB Articles on CRM Portal as and when required