What defines a legitimate urgent or afterhours request?
To start, let's consider that unless you're a critical infrastructure, virtually no issue you're going to face will be a life or death tech emergency. Generally speaking, of course. The old, But did you die from the problem?
Tech issues can be very personalized, and while we try to one size fits all, it's not always possible.
With this said, your version of urgent can be different from your providers version of urgent.
Here are a couple examples of priorities.
- Priority 1, entire company unable to work due to a systemwide outage, such as server failure.
- Priority 2, Multiple users unable to function due to an outage, such as systemwide failure.
- Priority 3, One user unable to work, such as computer crashing.
- Priority 4, Issue that impedes work but able to work around.
- Priority 5, No urgency issues, such as a move, change, add request.
Depending on your provider, Priority 1 through 3 will of course yield the fastest responses. Depending on your SLA, it could be 15 mins to 6 hours. Typically these are the priority levels considered urgent. Below levels could have responses as long as 12 to 48 hours.
When it comes to requests outside of business hours, commonly those that fall into the above criteria will be considered for response afterhours.
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