When you sign up for a support contract you will likely have many different tiers to chose from. Sometimes the level of support is overlooked and a cheaper option is purchased to save money on an overall deal. My recommendation when choosing the correct level of support is to check the SLA for first response. While it might be tempting to look at the response for a Severity 1 issue and determine if it meets your needs, you should read the definitions of severities and check the response times for each.

Severity Definition

Read carefully through the Severity Definitions. A high severity (Sev 1 or Sev A) will usually be in place for a severe outage. Most issues you will likely encounter will not fall in to a Sev 1/Sev A issue. Therefore it is imperative that you check what will happen if you open a Severity 2/B or a lower impacting severity.

Initial Response Time

This will be an agreement that the support vendor strives to achieve. Note that you will see longer initial response time targets for lower impacting severities.

Business Hours vs 24×7

For different severity levels there may be different hours of coverage. For example a Sev 1/Sev A may be covered 24×7 so whenever the issue hits, the clock for the initial commit will begin counting down. Whereas some other support levels or severities may only cover you during business hours. The countdown clock will stop outside of those hours.

Example Company

Let’s create an example company Darren Burnett Computer Support (DBCS)

Response Time	Tier 3	Tier 2	Tier 1
Sev A	4 Business Hours	2 Hours – 24×7	30 minutes – 24×7
Sev B	8 Business Hours	4 Business Hours	2 Hours 24×7
Sev C	1 Business Day	1 Business Day	8 Business Hours
Sev D	3 Business Days	3 Business Days	1 Business Day

Business Hours are Mon – Fri 09:00 to 17:00.

Example Issues

Friday at 16:00 all computers crash and fail to boot up. This is an agreed Sev A issue. Support request is opened immediately.

Sev A opened at 16:00 on a Friday	Tier 3	Tier 2	Tier 1
Actual Initial Response Time Due	Monday 12:00	Friday 18:00	Friday 16:30

You will need to determine if leaving your systems down over the weekend part way through Monday is sufficient for your business. If it isn’t then Tier 3 should likely not be considered. Tier 2 might not even be a valid option if waiting 2 hours is considered too long.

Another example. At Friday at 16:00 systems begin running slower than normal. This an agreed Sev B.

Sev B opened at 16:00 on a Friday	Tier 3	Tier 2	Tier 1
Actual Initial Response Time Due	Monday 16:00	Monday 12:00	Friday 18:00

It is also worth noting that a support request that is only supported Business Hours, the troubleshooting of an issue will end at 17:00 Mon-Fri and troubleshooting will resume again the following business day.

Determining what level is the correct fit

The cost of the different support levels will always play a factor. However, if you model out different scenarios and determine the business impact, and business cost of the outage you can better determine what support level is right for you.

If DCBS only manage your confectionary vending machine for staff, and there is a convenience store across the road that staff can use, then an outage is acceptable even if the vending machine is down. If DCBS manage your online ordering systems, then an outage of days while waiting for the initial response could mean significant loss of earnings and damage to your company’s reputation.

Spend some time reviewing your existing support contracts across your support vendors. Work out the cost you are currently paying, the SLA for initial contact, and the cost to your company while waiting for the initial response to determine if you feel that the current level meets your needs.