If you have never worked with outsourced IT providers before, then the idea of support and escalation can feel a little strange. What actually happens when you have a tech problem? How is it treated, and how long do you have to wait? The answer to these questions are found within a system of triage. Basically, support requests are handled on a case-by-case basis, and triage provides a structure for addressing everything in a timely manner.
Whenever you create a support request with Acropolis (and this is true for most MSPs), the request goes through triage. Basically, your issue is rated according to urgency, ranging from a grade of one to four.
The four levels of Triage at Acropolis determine the severity of an issue, its impact on the business, and how quickly we can respond to it. You will see a specific breakdown of the tiers in a bit, but as our co-founder, Tracy Butler put it, “Not every healthcare issue is as critical. Hopefully, flu is treated a little differently [in an emergency room] from a heart attack.”
Why do tickets need to go through triage? It’s a matter of resource limitations. There are only so many technicians and engineers available to work at a given moment, so they have to be dispatched strategically. On a slow day, even the lowest-priority requests will see prompt responses.
But when everyone is working hard, resources have to be aimed according to the job at hand. It’s obviously more important to fix crashing sales systems than it is to help a single designer get access to more fonts. These problems are not equal, and they should not be treated equally.
Triage ensures that anything critical to the business is addressed first, and everything else is handled as swiftly as reasonably possible afterward.
At Acropolis, we have four clear levels of escalation. The first level refers to the most critical support issues while the fourth level is for things that can safely wait a while.
Level 1 triage is for the very most important issues. If a problem is disrupting operations for the entire business, it fits in the Level 1 category.
This includes issues like major network outages, the inability to process sales, the primary website going down, and anything else with this level of impact on business functionality.
Level 1 issues are often referred to as mission-critical issues. If we don’t fix them quickly, your business suffers, and that’s why they get the top priority.
According to our co-founder, Tracy Butler, the goal is to get all Level 1 response times down to 20 minutes. Currently, you can expect a Level 1 response in under 30 minutes, and when a Level 1 ticket is created, technicians are dispatched immediately.
The time it takes to resolve a Level 1 issue depends on the problem, but technicians will be working on the issue right away.
Level 2 issues are important and contain urgency, but they are not shutting down the entire business. If a Level 1 issue involves a complete network outage across the company, then a Level 2 issue would be slow network performance across the company.
Things still work, but not in the way they should. Business is impacted, but it isn’t completely stopped.
Level 2 issues also might be catastrophic problems that only impact one sector of the company as opposed to the entire business. If one department had major networking problems, but that didn’t shut down regular business operations across the board, it might be a Level 2 issue.
At Acropolis, we aim to respond to Level 2 issues within 2 hours of creating the ticket. You can still expect a fast response, and there are times when we will dramatically exceed the two-hour expectation, but this is the timeframe that is traditionally appropriate for Level 2 problems.
Level 3 is the most common escalation tier. In fact, we call it the normal priority. Level 3 includes anything that requires immediate attention but does not impact the overall performance of the business.
Generally speaking, individual issues live here. If you need to reset your email password in order to catch up on the day’s messages, that’s probably a Level 3 issue. Very few people in a business will shut down all operations if they can’t open their email account right away.
Normal priority also applies to large-scale issues that are not disrupting business operations. A delayed backup or failed software update will usually fall in this category. They are things that we need to fix, but we will probably schedule support for a time when that support won’t disrupt daily business for your company.
Generally speaking, you can expect a technician to be working on a Level 3 problem within 8 hours of creating the ticket (naturally, times will be faster when possible).
Here’s an easy example to consider. You can’t access your email account, so you create a support ticket. A technician sees the ticket, resets your email account, and then sends you temporary access information. This can all be done remotely, so the technician will take these kinds of requests in order. On a busy day, it might take up to eight hours for all of these steps.
Level 4 support is for things that don’t have an immediate fix. In many cases, Level 4 support is for requests. If a department wants to install new software in all of their workstations, that would be a Level 4 issue. We need to take in the request, get budget approval, schedule a time to deploy the upgrade, and then carry out the process. This is rarely going to be a same-day kind of issue.
Because of the nature of Level 4 tickets, you can usually expect a technician response within three business days. In some cases, Level 4 solutions can take substantially longer, as they might require more careful planning for deployment. On average, though, you can expect Acropolis to match or exceed the three-day promise.
Considering how triage works, here’s the ultimate breakdown of support timelines. It takes up to 30 minutes to receive a support request, properly classify it, and dispatch help. That’s why even the most important issues can take up to 30 minutes before they see help arrive.
The 30 minutes attached to triage are included in the quoted support times. If you have a Level 1 issue, you can expect help immediately after the ticket is created. If you have a Level 3 issue, then you can expect help anywhere from 30 minutes to 8 hours after the ticket is created.