Sparkcentral Standard Service Level Agreement
Support is provided by the Sparkcentral Customer Support Team (“CST”). Support encompasses technical troubleshooting, functional expertise and instruction on the configuration and use of Sparkcentral products, and general customer service. The terms of the Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) are as follows:
SERVICE AVAILABILITY
The Subscription Services will be available 99.9% of the time, measured monthly, excluding downtime resulting from the following, referred to as (“Excused Downtime”):
Scheduled Downtime; downtime that is announced by Sparkcentral (see Scheduled Downtime Notification Schedule);
Failure of software, hardware, middleware or systems which are necessary to complete a transaction but which are not provided or controlled by Sparkcentral;
Denial of service attacks on the Customer website, or other failures attributable to the Customer website;
Service interruptions, outages or performance degradation caused by Customer or Customer’s affiliates, users, service providers, vendors or contractors or other third parties not under the control of Sparkcentral;
Force Majeure Events
Services are considered ‘unavailable’ when Customer and their users experience any of the following:
No users can login to the Agent Dashboard;
Cannot receive messages from any subscribed Mediums;
Cannot send messages to any subscribed Mediums
Monitoring of service availability will be performed by Sparkcentral using the following calculation:
a = [(b – c)-d] x 100 / b – c
“a” = the percentage of the service availability in such month;
“b” = the total number of hours in such month;
“c” = the total number of Excused Downtime in such month; and
“d” = the total number of hours the Subscription Services are unavailable for reasons other than Excused Downtime in such month.
SCHEDULED DOWNTIME NOTIFICATION SCHEDULE
If Maintenance or Product changes require downtime, Sparkcentral will adhere to the following notification schedule:
Scheduled Downtime | Example Activity | Notification | Downtime Window |
|---|---|---|---|
Greater than 20 minutes | Database or other technology upgrades or long running migrations. | 1 business week | US: 1 am to 3 am PST (10 am to 12 pm CET) |
Max of 20 minutes | Customer facing releases or security updates with no outage or short term outage due to component restart. | 2 business days | US: 1 am to 3 am PST (10 am to 12 pm CET) |
CUSTOMER SUPPORT BUSINESS HOURS
Sparkcentral Support normal business hours are Monday through Friday, 9am-5pm Pacific and 9am-5pm Central European time, excluding holidays, and can be contacted by email at support@sparkcentral.com.
SERVICE LEVEL COMMITMENTS
Sparkcentral will acknowledge and respond to all inbound requests as specified in the Severity Support Table below. Resolution times will vary depending on the complexity of the reported problem and/or the nature of the required solution. In some cases, resolution may take longer if:
A significant product change is required.
A third party network or service (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) is responsible for the underlying problem.
Sparkcentral’s standard framework for problem resolution is to categorize and prioritize problem reports in a typical manner, such as “Severity 1”, “Severity 2”, “Severity 3”, and “Severity 4”. Any production system outage is automatically treated as a high/critical “Severity 1” and triggers a 24×7 development and support commitment until resolved. Lower Severity issues are ranked based on impact to the Customer and issue complexity (see Severity Support Table).
Issues are defined as the product not performing or behaving as defined in product documentation. Reports or requests of non-documented behaviors are considered feature requests and are not subject to this framework for problem resolution.
SEVERITY SUPPORT TABLE
Severity 1 Support Issue | |
|---|---|
Severity Definition | Widespread production system outage. System is unusable. |
Initial Response | Within 30 Minutes Maximum |
Sparkcentral Action | All resources applied 24x7 until a workaround or fix is achieved such that material functionality is restored (assumes all 3rd party platforms operating properly). Sparkcentral may incorporate the fix into a future update to the SaaS Platform. |
Follow Up | (if requested/required) Every 4 hours following initial response |
Severity 2 Support Issue | |
|---|---|
Severity Definition | Major impact to production workflow. No clear work-around. |
Initial Response | Within 4 Business Hours Maximum |
Sparkcentral Action | Apply enough resources working during normal business hours with the goal of achieving a workaround or an appropriate fix such that material functionality is restored as soon as possible. If a more permanent fix is required, Sparkcentral will target completion of a fix within 14 business days once the problem is reproducible (assumes all 3rd party platforms operating within SLA). Sparkcentral may incorporate the fix into a future update to the SaaS Platform. |
Severity 3 Support Issue | |
|---|---|
Severity Definition | Minor impact to production workflow. Workaround available. |
Initial Response | 1 Business Day Maximum |
Sparkcentral Action | Review and respond within stated time frame. Use commercially reasonable efforts during normal business hours with the goal of achieving a workaround or an appropriate fix such that material functionality is restored, unless such functionality is deemed unimportant or obsolete by Sparkcentral. If applicable, resolution/workaround/fix of the problem may appear in a future update to the SaaS Platform. |
Severity 4 Support Issue | |
|---|---|
Severity Definition | No impact to production usage. Questions on product use, feedback, suggestions, feature requests, other |
Initial Response | 2 Business Days Maximum |
Sparkcentral Action | Review and respond within stated time frame. Use commercially reasonable efforts during normal business hours with the goal of addressing the question or capturing a request. |
MAINTENANCE AND UPDATE NOTIFICATION
Customer will be notified via email, status page (http://status.sparkcentral.com/) or by screen notifications within the Sparkcentral Platform as defined under Scheduled Downtime Notification Schedule. While all attempts are made to notify in advance and minimize interruptions to the service, it may be necessary to respond quickly and update with minimal or without advanced notification if security or service continuity is deemed at risk. Sparkcentral makes every effort to avoid such scenarios.