Tier 4 support

[SofaKing]

I recently ran into an issue that took several engineers, vendor support, and a few days to resolve.  Just curious to how much time other companies (especially those working for a large ISP) give to resolve tier 4 issues?  What is your typical sla for these types of issues?

[javentre]

It's not always about giving them time to resolve an issue.

When it's a big issue, we want to know they have the proper resources looking working the issue.  Sometimes we need pressure applied from the sales team.  If everyone is already engaged, a promise to fix the issue doesn't mean much.  We know all hands are on deck and you have to just wait for the clueful folks to do their job.

I had one issue that went well beyond any SLA that was in the contract.  Cisco was sufficiently stumped that they engaged Broadcom, the maker of the chips on the card.  In cases like this, everyone was doing all they could, a promise to have it resolved by some arbitrary time doesn't mean anything and doesn't change the result.

In cases like that, SLA credits are handled after the fact.  We really just want the service working.

[SofaKing]

Thanks for the reply javentre!  I totally agree that what's important is getting the issue resolved.  My company is pretty good about letting us work on the issue without giving us a hard time.  I was just wondering if there were any companies that are strict about their sla times and what happens if you go past that time.  Thanks again.

[icecream-guy]

I was just wondering if there were any companies that are strict about their sla times and what happens if you go past that time.  Thanks again.

Typically there is some sort of monetary credit from the service provider to the customer.  But really depends on what is in the SLA contract.

[deanwebb]

Sometimes, one discovers that even with the service disrupted, the SLA is still met. "See, we *responded* within four hours..."

[killabee]

Nope, we don't have anything like that.  I guess you could say that our vendor TACs and our SPs have SLAs for helping us/fixing our stuff, but I haven't yet reviewed the contracts or SLA agreements to understand how they work and how I could hold them accountable.  That starts stepping into layer 8 and 9, and I don't know if I'm ready to step there.

I will say that after engaging our TACs/SPs and not getting resolution for X amount of time, I start thinking about implementing a workaround or a new solution (where feasible).  I'm on my second round of that.  The hard part is convincing the business.