Support Policy

1. Support Center

1.1. Contact Information Users can contact HotSchedules and Fourth Customer Care in the following ways:
(a) Email: customercare@hotschedules.com and cases@fourth.com
(b) Community Forums: https://help.hotschedules.com/hc/en-us/community/topics and https://www.fourth.com/fourth-customer-community/
(c) Knowledge Base: https://help.hotschedules.com/hc/en-us and https://www.fourth.com/fourth-customer-community/
(d) Website: www.fourth.com
(e) Support Phone Line:

1.2. Generally
We offer 24/7 Customer Support services to active and authorized Users of the software.
Exceptions:

  • We staff bi-lingual (English/Spanish) representatives for inquiries in North and South America that require Spanish language support.
  • HotSchedules Essentials and HotSchedules Plus customers are entitled to email and online ticket support only which does not include live phone call support.
  • MacromatiX customers are entitled to Tier III services for all MacromatiX products without an additional charge. The Customer is responsible for Tier I and Tier II support for such products unless specifically purchased.

1.3. Tiered Response
The Customer Support Team consists of four tiers as described below:

(a) Tier I
This Tier handles the majority of inbound phone calls, emails, and web tickets. Tier I Personnel are certified to handle general User inquiries, basic troubleshooting of Software and integration, and issue tracking.

(b) Tier II
This Tier handles advanced features of the Software including more complex inquiries and troubleshooting, issue escalation, and issue tracking.

(c ) Tier III
This Tier handles complex engineering issues including databases, debugging software code and related services.

(d) Tier IV
This Tier is the Engineering Teams who resolve any issues within the infrastructure, database, or software code.

 

2. Escalation Procedures and Process

The escalation process for any problem with the operation of the Software is as follows.
Tier I —> Tier II —> Tier III —> Support Manager —> Customer Success Manager (if applicable) —> Director, Customer Support —> VP, Customer Support —> COO

 

3. Support Targets & Priority Definitions

3.1. Support Targets are based upon the priority of each inquiry or issue and can range from something that affects your business operations, which is fixed swiftly, to a browser-specific UI issue that does not limit functionality, which could take up to 12 weeks. Our Customer Support team leverages an ITIL style matrix of impact (outage, degradation or core functionality unavailable, code defect, cosmetic issue or basic inquiries) and urgency (one customer, many customers, all customers). Resolution of a code issue may be dependent on the software release cycle for a specific product. We will staff our operations with the objective of meeting the following target response and resolution times:

Priority-1: Subscription service application is down or in a state that most customers cannot reasonably perform any work or the integrity/security of data is in jeopardy.
TARGET RESPONSE: Immediate, requires a customer phone call to Customer Support
TARGET RESOLUTION: 3 Hours

Priority-2: Subscription service application is available; however, customers are unable to perform critical business operations due to a persistent loss of a feature or serious performance degradation.
TARGET RESPONSE: 3 Hours, requires ticket and a phone call to Customer Support ensures a swift acknowledgment
TARGET RESOLUTION: 12 Hours

Priority-3: Critical business functionality is available but either may require an unscalable or inconvenient workaround to use or is experiencing intermittent performance degradation.
TARGET RESPONSE: 6 Hours
TARGET RESOLUTION: up to 6 Weeks (varies based on impact, sprint cycles, etc)

Priority-4: Non critical functionality is unavailable, isolated customer-impacting issues, or exception case that has a reasonable workaround.
TARGET RESPONSE: 24 Hours
TARGET RESOLUTION: up to 12 Weeks (varies based on impact, sprint cycles, etc)

Target Service Level Agreement Exceptions:

  • Basic Support Inquiry – First Call Resolution; Emails/Web Tickets – up to 1 Business Day
  • Complex Support Inquiries and Changes – up to 5 Business Days – This consists of questions pertaining to advanced functionality including the transfer of data, data variances within the platform or settings not configured to a customer’s preference.
  • RFI (Request for Information) – up to 14 Business Days – This entails any information requested that is outside normal reporting capabilities. Please reference Section 5. Data/Storage Management Security, for limitations on historical data archive. Fees will apply.
  • Macromatix turnarounds for Priority-2 defects are highly dependent on additional complexities, including customer testing and deployment coordination. Due to this, Priority-2 code defects will vary on resolution time. Infrastructure operations for Priority-2 incidents align with the published target.

 

4. Data Center Operations

We are responsible for the operation of our data centers and all systems required to make the Software available for use by Customer. “Availability” or “Available” means you are able to log in and access the services.

Scheduled maintenance is not considered as time not Available. Additionally, any period in which you are unable to access the services due to your conduct, due to actions that we have taken at your request, or any circumstances outside of our control, shall not be considered time where services are not Available.

4.1. Scheduled Maintenance
Scheduled Maintenance, being pre-determined times during which access to the Subscription Software and our Internet access (collectively, “System”) is purposely taken down for scheduled standard maintenance. Recurring Scheduled Maintenance windows may be established per service offering. For example, first Wednesday of each month from 2:00 AM – 6:00 AM Central Time. Scheduled Maintenance windows for each service will be made available through our Status Page for Scheduled Maintenance, available online. Maintenance may be needed to be performed outside of the Recurring Scheduled Maintenance window as well. We shall use reasonable efforts to provide Customer with adequate notice of any Scheduled Maintenance. Any maintenance is considered to be “Scheduled” if the customer has been provided at least 2 weeks notice of the Scheduled Maintenance.

4.2. Unplanned or Emergency Maintenance
Unplanned or Emergency Maintenance being periods where the System access is not available as a result of the need to address a critical or emergency issue. If possible, the Customer will be notified prior to any Unplanned or Emergency Maintenance that falls outside any Scheduled Maintenance windows. Notifications will be delivered via the Status Page. Any maintenance is considered to be “Unplanned” or “Emergency” if the customer has not been provided at least 2 weeks notice of the maintenance. Unplanned or Emergency maintenance is considered time where services are not Available.

 

5. Data/Storage Management Security

We shall retain a minimum of 13 months of historical Customer Content online and may retain up to 5 years of archived data offline. We will retain payroll data as required per each region in which we operate.

 

6. Backup and Recovery

We will perform daily backups of Customer Content that is directly maintained by the Software. We shall store the data backup files at a secure location outside our Data Centers. We shall maintain the ability to restore files back to any previous 4 hour period within any given day in the previous 7 days and to the end of any previous week in the previous five weeks. Click here for the our Terms of Service.

 

7. Mobile Application Version Policy (HotSchedules App)

The purpose of this policy is to ensure the best possible user experience of our mobile applications by enforcing the use of the current and supported version.

We typically update all of its mobile applications every 2 (two) weeks. These updates may include minor bug fixes, improvements, and major feature enhancements. We will support the then-current version of our applications, which means that any user experiencing technical issues on an older version of the application will be asked to upgrade to the current version. In order to enforce this Mobile Application Version Policy, users on versions that are older than the current version + 2 versions back, will be required to upgrade to the current version. Upon login, users will receive a notification prompting the upgrade requirement and will not be able to login to a version older than the current version + 2 versions back. The upgrade requirement notifications will be enforced on the Monday immediately following the availability of our applications on both iTunes and Google Play. Upgrade requirement notifications will be sent no later than 9:00 am (US CDT) and will typically take place only on Mondays.