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Policies Overview

Policies Overview and Applicability

The following process outlines standards for customer problem resolution. Varying according to the severity of the reported problem, this policy defines three categories of issue severity and describes the criteria for each classification.

Requests for new functionality will not be considered problems. Customers may submit requests for additional features or updates to technical support or sales. The requests will be documented and forwarded to product management. Support Hours Technical support is available from 8 AM to 7 PM US Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, excluding observed holidays.

Severity Levels

The following criteria will be used in characterizing customer reported problems:

Level-1

Any ongoing major service disruption or problem which affects a large fraction of the user population of the product and is severe enough to cause those users to be unable to perform their normal duties. Problem may be of a functional or performance nature.

Level-2

Problem affects a small fraction of the user population and significantly reduces their productivity or affects a moderate fraction of the user population and moderately reduces their productivity.

Level-3

Problem is of an intermittent nature or represents a minor loss of productivity or is merely an inconvenience to the user population.

Customer Communication and Necessary Information

All customer problems will be recorded in the Sonian case tracking system by technical support engineers. If a problem is reported by email, a technical support engineer will contact the customer at the earliest reasonable opportunity to obtain any missing information. The recorded information will include, at a minimum:

  1. Date and time of first problem report
  2. Customer company name
  3. Name of Sonian engineer handling the issue (if any)
  4. Name and contact information for the customer submitting the case
  5. Nature of problem (symptoms, functional, performance, and circumstances sufficient for re-creation on-demand)
  6. Customer-defined or Sonian-defined work-arounds (if any)
  7. Initial recommendation by Sonian (if any)
  8. Severity of problem (using the above criteria)
  9. Current status of problem

All unresolved issues will cause the case to remain “open” in the Sonian case tracking system. Any severity type that cannot be resolved in prescribed response times (see below) will be escalated to Sonian technical support management.