There isn’t a single supplier in the UK voice and data industry that owns and operates 100% of the infrastructure on which their products and services depend. The emergence of the cloud has encouraged many centres of excellence to flourish and interconnect. This enables channel suppliers like Jola to knit best-of-breed suppliers together with software and service wraps to match the needs of our resellers and dealers. However, this approach brings with it unique challenges in support and incident management.
How quickly are you notified?
Should an incident occur, you need to know what the problem is and how long it will take to be fixed. You want to be on the front foot, pro-actively contacting your customers with detailed communications regarding the incident. If all suppliers in the chain do not have a well thought-through incident management process, a wave of dissatisfied end-user customers will quickly build, with the last reseller in the chain taking the brunt of the criticism. Organisations not used to dealing with the channel may not understand the imperative for fast, accurate information. Those that are not channel-only will often prioritise their direct customers over their channel partners.
How should it be done?
Ideally incidents are categorised by priority. We use the UTIL guidelines categorising incidents by impact and urgency, P1, P2 etc. Suppliers need to get the initial communication out to customers within the first 30 minutes (we aim for 15) explaining the issue. It is important to have clear communication between the engineers working on the problem and the support team managing calls and communications. Updates need to be at least hourly. Communication paths need to be established in advance between suppliers and departments for effective updates.
When the problem and solution have been identified, any emergency maintenance must be notified quickly, giving as much notice as possible. Ideally the fix should be tested in a test environment beforehand. If the maintenance is likely to cause a service outage, it should be performed in the maintenance window unless the service is hard-down. An assessment must be made quickly on the timing and this should include consultation with technical, commercial and partner stakeholders. As soon as a fix has been tested and implemented, it needs to be communicated and confirmation received that it has worked. This often throws up secondary issues, which need to be communicated and fixed in the same way. When an incident is closed, the RFO and PIR need to be published as soon as possible.
The RFO (Reason for Outage)
Why did a service go down, what caused it? This is important as a starting point for the team to investigate why it happened and what steps can be taken to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
The PIR (Post Incident Review)
This process is where analysis is conducted and recommendations are made to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Jola works with multiple providers of internet connectivity and telephony. We have operated in the channel for many years and understand the importance of pro-active communication and collaberation when incidents occur.
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