SamKnows Support Services Policy
This SamKnows Support Services Policy describes the policies and procedures under which SamKnows provides support services (“Support Services”) to its customers (each, a “Customer” or “You/Your”). Support Services are provided for the SamKnows solution pursuant to the Agreement and are subject to the terms of such Agreement and this policy. Support Service options described below include Standard Support and Customer Success Manager. Support Services are provided for the term of the Agreement or the applicable Order/Statement of Work. Capitalized terms not defined in this document are as defined in the Agreement.
SamKnows is committed to delivering a quality monitoring experience to our customers. As part of our commitment, it is our goal to improve the SamKnows solution by effectively managing and endeavoring to quickly resolve technical inquiries. The purpose of this Policy is to communicate the support options and processes and clearly set expectations regarding Support Services.
Outside of the Support Services described below, the following Cisco/ThousandEyes practices are applicable to SamKnows (1) the Cisco security vulnerability policy and (2) the specific remediation targets are described in the ThousandEyes Security Brief available here.
The SamKnows Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) is located here.
Support Services:
Standard Support
This level of support provides access to our support organization via email. Standard support business hours are 9am to 5pm GMT on UK business days only. This covers SamKnows One, RealSpeed, APIs and Data Streaming as appropriate.
Target response times are based on the priority level of reported problems and are further set forth in the priority and target response time matrix below.
Customer Success Manager (CSM) Premium Support
Customer Success Managers are available as a premium support service offering, a for-fee subscription service, typically purchased in conjunction with the SamKnows solution. The CSM is a named support resource, providing support during UK business-hours support, focused on proactive and reactive support.
CSM Support Services
- General account management services, monitoring, change, capacity, incident management, updates and maintenance of SamKnows One, Whitebox, Off-Net Servers, and SDKs.
- Documentation of SamKnows One, Whitebox, Off-Net Servers and SDKs.
- Weekly Project Calls
- Quarterly Business Reviews
CSM Test Server Support
- Email Support during UK business hours for test server software.
- On-Net Servers shall adhere to the specifications and requirements set out on the Installer documentation at https://github.com/SamKnows/On-net-installer
- Customer shall provide remote access and personnel contact details to the servers to permit Support Services.
- Capacity and performance of the servers shall be subject to technical capabilities of the server(s) and the connectivity provisioned.
- Maintenance of Test Server software.
- Monitoring: SamKnows shall inform Customer should servers exceed 90% of capacity and provide guidance on capacity management.
- SLA for Off-net Test Servers shall only apply when SamKnows has completed production testing and is limited to test server software only.
- Testing for production use is subject to Customer providing a minimum of 2 servers of equivalent capability.
CSM Data Streaming Support
- Email Support Service maintained during UK business hours.
- Support Service is provided for data supply to the GCP pub/sub topics in accordance to the Data Streaming Data Dictionary specification documentation.
- Customer to provide up to 5 named contacts.
- Incident Management
- An outage is defined as no metrics provided on all topics. SamKnows shall provide updates every 2 hours during UK business hours.
- A major incident is where 1 or more topics are not receiving metrics. SamKnows shall provide an update every 4 Hours.
- Maintenance Management - SamKnows shall inform Customer at least 5 days in advance of any outages due to maintenance except for emergency work.
SamKnows Additional Resources
During a support request, you may interact with SamKnows representatives operating in one or more of these roles:
- Customer Success Managers (“CSM”) - Will engage with you on your ongoing satisfaction, new product offerings, and guidance during your solution subscription renewal. This team consists of customer relationship experts, who ensure a successful customer journey at SamKnows. Additionally, at an additional cost, Customer may purchase a named resource within SamKnows, with SamKnows solution and customer relationship expertise. If purchased the named resource acts as an advocate for you within SamKnows by overseeing the technical support process and helping to prioritize open cases within the Customer Engineering team, managing ongoing technical projects and requests, and providing feedback on how you can maximize value from your SamKnows Service purchase through a regular business review.
- Professional Services Consultants (“PSC”) – Available as a premium service offering, the PSC is a resource within SamKnows who specializes in delivery of training and custom engagements. Billable on either a fixed-fee or hourly basis, PSCs work with you to maximize your efficiency within the Product and to transfer knowledge and best practices in order to ensure an optimal deployment.
- Site Reliability Engineering (“SRE”) – For network and other service--related inquiries, if the customer engineering team is unable to resolve your issue after the initial troubleshooting phase, representatives of the SRE team may be called in to assist.
- Product Engineering (“ENG”) – For product related support issues, if the prior layers of technical support are unable to resolve your issue, the inquiry will be escalated to the SamKnows product engineering team, which includes product developers from the core technology team within SamKnows.
Priority and Response Target Matrix
During notification of an issue, a SamKnows representative will assign a priority level, based on the criteria described in the matrix below. SamKnows will use commercially reasonable efforts to respond to Customer inquiries within specified targets based on the priority of the reported issue according to the matrix.
| Priority Level | Priority Level | Description | Target Response Time (during Business Hours) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority 1 | Urgent | SamKnows One and/or the Test Servers are inoperable resulting in full work stoppage. No procedural workarounds or alternatives are available. | 1 hour |
| Priority 2 | High | SamKnows One and/or the Test Servers are significantly degraded resulting in substantial impact to the business. Viable workarounds or alternatives may be feasible. | 4 hours |
| Priority 3 | Medium | SamKnows One and/or the Test Servers are minimally or partially degraded. This may be the result of limited connectivity issues, misconfiguration of established production systems or minor bugs. | 8 hours |
| Priority 4 | Low | SamKnows One and/or the Test Servers are working as intended. There is no impact to existing production infrastructure or services. This level may include things like: general inquiries, new setup or configuration questions, best practices, or similar. | Next day |
Resolution
A support inquiry will be closed when a Customer’s inquiry is resolved. A resolution is typically one of the following: an answer to the question, a suggestion on how to perform a particular task, an acceptable workaround to a product issue, or the deployment of a code fix. Customers will be notified when SamKnows considers their support inquiry as closed, and this closure notification will always be done via email, to the email address on record. Cases may be closed if Customer fails to respond following two successive contact attempts by SamKnows.
A support inquiry can be reopened at any time at a Customer's request, if further investigation is required.
Customers may initiate escalation of requests at Priority levels 1, 2, or 3 by sending an email request for escalation via Your support point of contact.
Escalation requests must contain the original support inquiry, the Customer contact, and reason for requesting the escalation. SamKnows will consider all escalation requests in good faith; however, SamKnows’ conclusion will be determinative.
Support Restrictions
Access to SamKnows resources is restricted to Customers whose accounts are in good standing with SamKnows.
Customer Cooperation
Customer will provide all information and access to Customer resources as reasonably required for SamKnows to provide Support Services, which may include access to Customer servers, participation in web meetings using online collaboration services (such as Cisco Webex), physical access to Customer facilities, and assistance from Customer personnel. SamKnows will be excused from any non-performance of its obligations hereunder to the extent any such non-performance is attributable to Customer's failure or delay to cooperate as set forth in this Policy.