What steps should Client Support Analysts or Support Engineers should take when handling critical priority tickets? Here is a proposed framework on what to do?

1. P1 TICKET HANDLING
PROCESS
By Mohammad Ali
ali.connect@outlook.com

2. Process for handling Priority-1(P1) issues
Analyse
• Understand the Issue,
• Impact on Service,
• Act as end user / client
• Set a priority / SLA based
timeline
Resolve
• Organise Information
• Hypothesize resolution
• Escalate - Support team, Product
Team.
• Communicate Impact & progress
Systemize
• Root Cause Analysis
• Future Safety – how to avoid
• Recommendation for Dev or
Deployment
• Communicate client and internal
management

3. • First Response
• Assure that we respond as per our TTA (Time to Accept) SLA
• Client / User Experience
• Ascertain what steps are taken when this issue is encountered
• Environment
• Document which environment, endpoint, clients are facing this issue.
• Replicate
• Can we replicate the issue when following those steps?
• Is the issue specific to this Client or all Clients using service?
• Timeline
• Since when this issue has been encountered?
• Was there a recent change (release, update, migration etc)
• Resolution SLA
• Understand which SLA category this issue falls under
• Communicate commitment and timelines to Client
Analyse – Understand the issue

4. • Organise all the information that we have so far
• Clients message, our experiments, steps to reproduce, environment and so on
• Escalate (when necessary)
• Can this issue impact other clients? If so, alert them
• Support Team (internal)
• Summarize the issue, and next steps that we intend to take within the team
• Convey Impact of the issue & priority
• Hypothesize
• Is the error code & message documented in Service Documentation?
• Search support tickets & documentation for relevance
• Based on Service Knowledge, identify possible areas which are causing issue
Resolve – Step 1

5. • Assign
• Communicate finding to Product / Engineering team responsible for resolution
• Act as voice of customer – making sure fruitful initial investigation is conveyed &
understood.
• Report
• Report progress back to client
• This should be done on periodic basis, conveying progress
• Further Escalation
• If there is a blocker in Product team accepting / resolving issue, escalate to relevant
team’s management
• Also escalate within Support Team
• Acceptance Test
• Once Issue has been resolved, act as a client and test the resolution
• Test thoroughly for all known / replicable scenarios
• Provide sign off only if test is acceptable.
• Communicate back to client
• Communicate resolution back to client
• Communicate within team of resolution
Resolve – Step 2

6. • Root Cause Analysis
• Convey the RCA to the client whenever available (ideally by next scheduled meeting
• Future Safety
• Understand how can we avoid this issue from occurring in future
• Example: change in deployment process is required.
• Recommendation for Dev or Deployment
• Systemize your recommendation as Requirment
• Convey this to relevant Dev or Deployment Team
• Convince them to get a buy-in
• Ask for possible timelines
• Communicate client and internal management
• Share RCA & Recommendation internally
Systemize

7. By Mohammad Ali
ali.connect@outlook.com