Dated April 8, 2024 – Version 3.2
This Policy Guide, in addition to providing information about Crossfuze’s policies, serves as the foundation for certain agreements between Crossfuze and its customers.
A. SUPPORT STRUCTURE
1. Service Desk Analysts
Service Desk Analysts are responsible for providing first-line support through taking calls and emails, and handling the resulting incidents and service requests using the incident management and request fulfillment processes. This includes the functional escalation to higher-level support groups. Service Desk Analysts maintain excellent customer service and communication skills, and are developing technical skills through both direct experience and technical certifications.
2. Managed Services Technicians
Managed Services Technicians are responsible for the problem management process. In addition, they are responsible for assisting in the incident management process when the Service Desk Analysts are unable to provide a resolution. Managed Services Technicians are also responsible for managing configuration items such as software, hardware, and network components via change management. Managed Services Technicians maintain various certifications including Cisco, Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware products. Managed Services Technicians staff will engage assistance from Managed Services Engineers when complex problems require additional expertise.
3. Managed Services Engineers
Managed Services Engineers are responsible for infrastructure design and support, assistance with complex problems, and developing Knowledge Articles and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Knowledge Articles and SOPs are used extensively by the Service Desk Analysts and Managed Services Technicians to help ensure that Crossfuze’s efforts are consistent and properly executed in accordance with the Customer environment. Managed Services Engineers maintain various certifications in most major network, systems, and utility products and engage in continuous training and education programs.
4. Service Account Manager
The Service Account Manager is responsible for total customer satisfaction by helping to ensure that services are delivered and supported in accordance with the terms of the agreed customer requirements. As the designated accountable person for the delivery of the services, your Service Account Manager is empowered to make decisions and escalate directly to executive management in order to help ensure the customer requirements are met.
Acting as the customer advocate, the Service Account Manager manages customer related issues to help ensure that expectations are properly set and met; and that changes to delivery are properly communicated. The Service Account Manager helps to ensure that customer-impacting problems are fully resolved and promotes continuous improvement by providing root cause analysis reports in the event of Service Level failures. Additionally, the Service Account Manager escalates the customer concerns to management as appropriate and is the liaison within Crossfuze for Service related issues. While the initial point of contact remains with the Service Desk, the Service Account Manager will maintain regular communication and should be the primary escalation point for all Crossfuze service related issues.
B. SERVICE OPERATION PROCESSES
The Service Desk Analyst, or other assigned resource in the support structure has ownership of your open incidents, problems, changes and service request tickets and will keep you informed of status changes and completion. For more complex changes the Service Account Manager will coordinate delivery and assist with scheduling implementation and verification with the appropriate technical resources.
In the event that your business needs require the immediate escalation of a Support Request, contact the Service Desk with the Support Request number and ask that the ticket be escalated. Customer will be put in touch with your Service Account Manager or an appropriate manager. Crossfuze maintains automated escalation procedures for critical problems to help ensure that the appropriate technical teams and management are engaged. The Service Desk remains engaged until the problem is resolved or the Customer approves a lower level of support.
1. Incident Management
A failure or unexpected result with a Crossfuze-provided service is categorized as an incident and results in an Incident recorded in Crossfuze’s service management system. Crossfuze provides 24 x 7 support to resolve incidents pursuant to response and resolution timeframes set forth below.
Incident Management ensures that normal service operation is restored as quickly as possible. Normal service operation is defined as operational state where services are performing within agreed service and operational levels.
2. Event Management
Managed Services Engineers are responsible for infrastructure design and support, assistance with complex problems, and developing Knowledge Articles and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Knowledge Articles and SOPs are used extensively by the Service Desk Analysts and Managed Services Technicians to help ensure that Crossfuze’s efforts are consistent and properly executed in accordance with the Customer environment. Managed Services Engineers maintain various certifications in most major network, systems, and utility products and engage in continuous training and education programs.
3. Email Management
Email from any source is reviewed and categorized according to nature of inbound email such as reports of failure or unexpected results in IT services, non-incident queries such as requests for information, or fulfillment requests.
Crossfuze provides 24 x 7 support to manage emails pursuant to response timeframes set forth below. Tasks performed for the varying type of emails and resolution of emails are set forth in the applicable Statement of Work.
4. Request Fulfillment
Crossfuze will manage the process of fulfilling the formal service requests for non-incident queries, such as requests for information or advice, setting up a specific piece of software, workstation configuration, and other tasks as set forth in the applicable Statement of Work.
5. Problem Management
The primary objectives of the Problem Management Process is to prevent incidents from happening, to eliminate recurring incidents and to minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented. This process includes the activities of determining the root cause of incidents and determining the resolution to those problems.
Crossfuze will conduct a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) as part of the Problem Management process to identify the underlying cause of major incidents that result in an outage to Crossfuze-provided Services. The RCA shall contain sufficient detailed information in order for Customer to determine if the incident was properly analyzed and corrected.
To the extent possible, the RCA will also be used to determine applicability to Service Level Commitments. Root cause of an outage cannot always be determined as a result of multiple potential causes.
6. Change Management
An issue that describes additional or modified functionality is categorized as a Request for Change and results in a Change Request Ticket recorded in Crossfuze’s service management system. Crossfuze follows a best practices change management policy that requires adequate leadtime for planning, testing and verification of all production changes.
7. Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management is the process implemented to gather, develop, store and then help distribute the information and knowledge of IT services and infrastructure to those who need it in a timely manner. Tasks performed for the varying type of knowledge requests are set forth in the applicable Statement of Work.
C. SERVICE MANAGEMENT
Crossfuze combines a best of breed approach to delivering world-class service management. Crossfuze’s management fabric provides for the collection and management of monitoring data from both Crossfuze infrastructure and Customer servers and devices. Availability alerts, resource thresholds, call tracking, incident and problem ticketing, change and inventory management are some of the areas managed and monitored by our management fabric.
1. Incident Priority Levels and Times
It is important that Crossfuze accurately understands the Priority of a given incident as determined by its Urgency and Impact. Priority is used to identify required times for actions to be taken, such as notification and escalation, and is determined by the following matrix:
| Impact | High | Medium | Low |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Priority 1 | Priority 2 | Priority 3 |
| Medium | Priority 2 | Priority 3 | Priority 3 |
| Low | Priority 3 | Priority 3 | Priority 3 |
Customer reserves the right to raise the priority level one level up from standard level on an as needed basis. This increase requires an authorization from senior-level management within the organization.
Urgency, is defined as a measure of how long it will be until an incident, problem or change has a significant impact on the business:
| High | Up to 4 hours |
|---|---|
| Medium | Up to 1 day |
| Low | Up to 4 days |
Impact is the effect, or measure of damage, of an incident, problem or change could have on the business:
| High | A floor, department, or remote office is down or significantly impacted or an important web site is impacted. Customer is at-risk of large financial impact (a critical production server, production business application, or production system is down; a large LAN or WAN is down). A critical production sever or application is down (a WAN link affecting a small remote site; a LAN printer with no available alternative). |
| Medium | An individual workstation is down and no workaround is available. An individual printer is down. A single customer is unable to perform business critical work and no workaround is available. A single development server is down. A single development web site is down. A server-level backup is not functioning. |
| Low | A slow application performance, single user, application is functioning. An individual workstation is experiencing slow or impaired performance and a workaround is available. Batch process failure, workaround successful. Requests for service. |
The following table shows priority levels and their associated response and resolution times for incidents:
| Priority Level | Service Level Resolution Time (1) | Service Level Response Time (2) | Operational Level Target Status Update to Client (3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 Hours | 15 Minutes | 1 Hour |
| 2 | 24 Hours | 30 Minutes | 1 Hour |
| 3 | 2 Business Days | 2 Hours | 8 Business Hours |
| 4 | 5 Business Days | 8 Hours | Informational Only |
(1) This is from the time the customer contacts the Service Desk and a ticket is opened, to the time that the ticket is marked as resolved.
(2) This is the amount of time the support group has to acknowledge ownership of the ticket.
(3) This is the interval in which status updates to the customer are targeted to occur. Updates must include estimated time of resolution or time of the next update.
2. Request Fulfillment Service Levels
The following table shows response and resolution times for Request Fulfillment:
| Urgency | Service Level Fulfillment Time (1) | Service Level Response Time (2) |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 3 Business Days | 8 Business Hours |
| Expedited | 4 Hours | 1 Hour |
| Emergency | 1 Hour | 15 Minutes |
(1) This is the amount of time the support group has to complete the request following task approval or delivery of
equipment.
(2) This is the amount of time a task has to be acknowledged from receipt.
3. Event Management Service Levels
Event Response and categorization is based on the significance of the event utilizing the following
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) definitions:
- Informational: the event does not require any action and does not represent an exception. They are recorded in the log files and maintained for a predetermined period. This type of event is used to check the status of a device or service, to confirm the state of an activity, to generate statistics (user login, batch job completed, device power up)
- Warning: the event is generated when a device or service is approaching a threshold. Warnings are intended to notify the group/process/tool in order to take the necessary actions to prevent an exception. A device failure warning should be treated as an exception, since the risk for an incident is present.
- Exception: means that a service or device is currently operating below the normal parameters/indicators (predefined). This mean that the business is impacted and the device or service presents a failure, performance degradations or loss of functionality.
| Significance | Service Level Response time (1) |
|---|---|
| Informational | 2 Hours |
| Warning | 1 Hour |
| Exception | 15 minutes |
(1)This is the amount of time a Service Desk analyst acknowledges the email.
4. Email Management Service Levels
The following table shows response times for email management
| Service | Level | Response | Time | (1) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Hours |
(1)This is the amount of time a Service Desk analyst acknowledges the email.
5. Priority Levels and Root Cause Analysis Completion
Root Cause Analysis is performed on all Priority 1 (Major Incident issues) and the completion is done in the following timeframes:
| Priority Level | Service Level Resolution Time (1) |
|---|---|
| Major Incident (P1) | 5 Business Days |
(1)This is the amount of time the support group has to complete the Root Cause Analysis from the resolution of the problem.
6. First Contact Resolution
Where applicable, Crossfuze provides first contact resolution (FCR) for services. FCR is reported on a monthly basis, and adheres to the following definitions:
FCR applies only to Incidents and must meet the following two criteria to be considered as having met FCR:
1. The Crossfuze Service Desk is the first Level 1 assignment group / resolver group for the Incident. For example:
- Criteria #1 is met if an Incident is opened via phone or email and resolved by the Crossfuze Service Desk team
- Criteria #1 is met if an Incident is opened via self-serve by the Customer; AND Crossfuze Service Desk is the originating assignment group / resolver group; AND the Incident is resolved by the Crossfuze Service Desk as the resolver group
The Incident does not change from original resolver group to any other resolver group. For example:
- Criteria #2 is met if an Incident was opened and resolved by Crossfuze Service Desk analyst
- Criteria #2 is met if an Incident was opened by Crossfuze Service Desk analyst but transferred to another Crossfuze Service Desk analyst within the same resolver group for resolution
- Criteria #2 is NOT met if an Incident was opened by a Crossfuze Service Desk analyst but escalated to another Crossfuze resolver group (e.g. L2 support) for resolution
- Criteria #2 is NOT met if an Incident was opened by a Crossfuze Service Desk analyst but escalated to a Customer resolver group (e.g. L2 support) for resolution
D. CONTACTING CROSSFUZE
A Contact is a unique, inbound request to the Service Desk via phone, email, web self-service, or chat (if applicable). Callbacks or emails from the Service Desk to the end user are not counted as a Contact. Interactions with an end user with an open ticket are also not counted as a Contact. Inbound calls from users will be routed through a single IVR provided by Crossfuze; for those calls routed to any third party via the IVR, Crossfuze will not charge those calls as Contacts.
1. Direct Call
Calls placed to your dedicated Service Desk number will put you in direct contact with the Crossfuze Service Desk. The answering Service Desk Analyst will request your name before proceeding; if your name is not found in Crossfuze’s service management system, the Service Desk Analyst will take a few minutes to add your contact information.
When you call the Service Desk you will be asked to provide the following information:
- Your Name
- Description of your Issue or Request
Callers may also be asked to provide the following additional information:
- Company
- Title
- Department
- Location
- Work Phone
- Cell Phone
- Email address
The Service Desk Analyst will either resolve your issue on the call or provide you with a tracking number, which will be used to track the issue through resolution.
2. E – Mail
E-mail requests can be sent to your dedicated email address for reaching the Service Desk. The Customer is automatically notified by email from our management system that an email has been received and when a ticket is opened on their behalf.
Please call the Service Desk directly for critical or major incidents (High impact and urgency). Email should be used for lower urgency and impact.
Email turnaround may be affected by problems outside of Crossfuze’s control, such as Internet delays and email problems at the Customer site.
If you do not receive a return email notification within one business day, please call the Service Desk directly.
Avoid Confusion or Duplication of Effort
- Multiple people should not report the same issue to the Service Desk
- Do not use existing tracking numbers to inform the Service Desk of a new issue
- Do not copy the Service Desk on conversational emails since all emails are processed
Ensure Shipping & Receiving Success
- If you do not receive a return notification within 1 business day of your expected shipment delivery date, please contact the Crossfuze Service Desk
- Always include a Support Request number and your Customer Name when shipping supplies or equipment to a Crossfuze facility