What is a critical incident and how do 7bridges handle them?
What is a critical incident?
A critical incident is defined by our Support SLAs which can be found here: Support Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Prioritisation. In short, it is an issue that is a highly significant blocker to one or multiple customers or a security incident.
A critical incident can be identified in a number of ways:
- Internal 7bridges system monitoring alerts
- Internal 7bridges staff member reporting via internal communication systems
- 7bridges customer raising issue via our support channels
SLAs and resolution
As per the Support Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Prioritisation guide, we aim to respond to reports of critical incidents within 1 hour. We do not guarantee a resolution time although we work to resolve any critical incident as fast as we possibly can by standing up a team dedicated to resolving the issue. As a guide from past incidents, this is often within an hour or two but can be faster.
Roles and responsibilities
Who does what to manage a critical incident through to resolution?
Customer Support - Head of Customer Support
- To ensure issues that should be critical incidents are logged as such
- To actively manage critical incidents through to resolution
- Oversee the coordination of a critical incident response
- Keep the responding team focused on unblocking customers
- Investigate and document the root cause of the critical incident
- Collate learnings from the critical incident
- Convert these learnings into actions and ensure they are completed
- To report to the 7bridges Lead Team on the status and resolution of critical incidents
- To message customers on the critical incident status as needed - NOTE: it is not a standard practice to communicate all critical incidents to all customers
Customer Success - Your Customer Engagement Director
- To provide assistance to Customer Support
- To help assign tasks if needed
- To help communicate to customers, where required
- To actively monitor updates and critical incident status
Technical - Chief Technical Officer
- To actively monitor updates and critical incident status
- To provide an escalation point for customer complaints relating to the critical incident
Other parties
- Engineers will be assigned tasks by Customer Support to resolve any bugs with the platform and will keep the team updated with progress
- Product Managers will support on critical decisions
- Customer Operations may be assigned tasks by Customer Support to resolve any issues with data that is ingested into the platform and will keep the team updated with progress
FAQs
Will all critical incidents be communicated to customers?
No, this is not guaranteed for a number of reasons. First, not all critical incidents affect the platform features used by some customers. Second, some critical incidents happen at a time that means it does not affect certain customers.
However, be assured that any customer reporting a problem that is related to a critical incident will be informed that the issue is being handled as critical and so receiving the 7bridges team’s full and urgent attention.
Having said this, there are occasions where we proactively inform some or all customers about particular issues with the platform - including critical incidents. This happens when it is deemed essential to pass on particular information about the incident or the resolution.
What do I do if I think there is a critical incident?
Follow the standard process to log a support ticket. As always, please provide as much information as possible, including the impact, so our team understand the nature and urgency of the issue. We will respond and inform you if that issue is in fact a critical incident.
How will I know if a support ticket I raise is regarded as a critical incident?
Our Customer Support Agents will inform you if an issue you reported is critical.
How will I know if a critical incident is resolved?
We will always contact the original ticket requestor to inform them when the issue they logged is resolved. This is the same for critical incidents. You can also always check the status of any issue (including critical incidents) raised by you or anyone in your company at the Customer Portal - support.the7bridges.com/home.