Support Process
Support Philosophy
Here you'll find the process by which Catamarun coordinates and delivers its technical support responses to its customers. Our general philosophy is to:
- Provide the highest quality and fastest possible support directly to Catamarun customers.
- Deliver customer satisfaction; internally, the Catamarun support team is evaluated on their customer satisfaction metrics and are responsible for delivering consistent measured customer satisfaction.
- Ensure Catamarun authorized personnel are properly supported during field installations and troubleshooting activities, assuming the support request is in regards to a current on-location support plan.
- Effectively track and coordinate customer interactions and support activities.
Support Paradigm
- All contract customers have an explicit support owner at all times. Normally this is a Catamarun support team member; however, during in pre-contract sales it could be a Catamarun Systems Engineer, VAR, or other field sales resource.
- All legitimate support requests are the responsibility of Catamarun Support until closure, unless there is explicit agreement between Catamarun Support and the customer to transfer management of the case to another party.
- Unless discussed and agreed to by Catamarun Support, all customer support communication flows through the Catamarun Support Team. This ensures:
- Proper case management and recording
- Proper follow up is achieved throughout case lifecycle
- Customer satisfaction is the responsibility of the Customer Support Team.
Privacy
The Catamarun management platform provides Support engineers with rich visibility into customer requests, resulting in faster diagnosis and resolution of cases. Our policies, outlined below, ensure that customer information is only accessed with prior consent, for the purposes of resolving a support case.
- Support will not view customers' network configuration without prior consent
- Support will not modify customers' network without prior consent
- On rare occasions, support may view network status without prior notice to identify and diagnose system-wide issues. In these cases, network configuration information, including security settings and policies, will not be accessed
Hours and SLAs
Catamarun support operates 24x7 support out of support centers based in Nairobi
Catamarun has no support-specific licensing. Customers may open an unlimited number of support cases with the purchase of any support plan, and can contact Catamarun by phone or email.
Hours of Operation and SLA
Online / email support
- Non-emergency support cases opened via email will be answered within one business day; usually within 2 hours.
- Emergency support is offered exclusively via telephone to ensure that Catamarun engineers can conduct appropriate troubleshooting and technical response.
Phone support
- Phones at Catamarun technical support centers are staffed to ensure that one-on-one, phone-based technical support is always available from technical support engineers.
RMA Delivery
Catamarun Support will ship new devices from distribution centers to a customer-specified location within 1 business day of any support case requiring the Advanced Replacement RMA of any device. Delivery times to certain locations or remote destinations can vary.
Contract SLA
For Hours/SLA information on legacy SLA, please contact Catamarun Support.
Case Escalations
In the event that any case cannot be immediately resolved, Catamarun Support will escalate that case to appropriate engineering personnel within Support, Product and Sales Engineering according to the following schedule and priorities. Generally, escalations are major issues that require notification and/or intervention by key portions of the company in order to ensure timely issue resolution.
Priority Levels
- Priority 1 — Major Impact: The network is inoperable or the performance of the network is so severely reduced that Licensee cannot reasonably continue to operate the network because of the Error and the Error cannot be circumvented with a Workaround.
- Priority 2 — Moderate Impact: The network’s performance is significantly degraded such that Licensee’s Use of the network as permitted is materially impaired, but the Error can be circumvented with a Workaround.
- Priority 3 — Minor Impact: Licensee is experiencing a performance, operational, or functional Error that can be circumvented with a Workaround and the Error causes only minimal impact to the Licensee’s ability to Use the network as authorized.
- Priority 4 — General Questions: There is no issue with network performance or operation. These include standard questions on network configuration or functionality, network enhancement requests, or documentation clarification.
Catamarun will trigger case escalations as necessary by priority level to ensure timely resolution of all cases.
Service Levels
| Priority | Catamarun Acknowledgment | Catamarun Case Escalation |
| Priority 1 | One (1) hour* | Four (4) hours |
| Priority 2 | Four (4) hours | Eight (8) hours (next business day) |
| Priority 3 | Four (4) hours | Five (5) days |
| Priority 4 | Eight (8) hours | Five (5) days |
Escalation Triggers
A case may be escalated based on any of the following criteria:
- Recommendation by Catamarun personnel including
- Technical Support Engineer
- Systems Engineer
- Catamarun Management
- Response time: failure to provide response or resolution within the timeframes described in the service level section above may generate an escalation.
- Issue severity: system outage automatically generates an escalation. Other severe product issues may generate an escalation at the discretion of Catamarun personnel listed above.
- Customer satisfaction related matters: failure to fully satisfy the customer may generate a case escalation.
Notification list and notification methodology
In the event that a case is escalated, the following persons will be notified and kept apprised of the issue until de-escalation:
Tier 1
- The Customer
- Customer’s Account Representative
- Customer’s Systems Engineer
- Techical Support Engineer owning the case
Tier 2
- The Director of Services
- Engineer owning any associated bug/feature
Tier 3
- V.P. of Sales
- V.P. of Engineering
- V.P. of Product Management
Escalation Actions
- The team above is notified of the escalation in order of severity.
- If fully escalated, Director of Services takes ownership of issue until resolution.
- Assemble appropriate team from persons listed above to assess the issue and develop a resolution plan, and communicate plan to the customer:
- Specific actions to be taken in order to resolve the issue
- Issue owners
- Due date/time for each action
- Explicit agreement from engineering management for resources to perform engineering tasks
- Decision on whether or not to dispatch on site service
- Decision on the next escalation meeting
- Decision to de-escalate
- Plan is agreed upon and executed
- Case is resolved and customer is informed
RMA Warranty/Guarantee
- To comply with best practices, all RMA requests should only be processed after a technical support case has been opened and proper troubleshooting has taken place.
- Products covered by the OEM warranty are eligible for replacement. Replacement orders will depend on OEM Warranty Center delivery times. All brand new hardware products come with either a warranty, as specified on the relevant OEM data sheet.
- In the event a customer RMA request is approved, Catamarun will correspond with OEM Warranty Center free of charge. Any replacement unit will be attended to within five business days of receiving defective units as stock allows. If no defect is found, the RMA request will be rejected and the customer will be notified.