The commitments, before you are a customer
Most providers will not show you an SLA until you are at contract stage, which is exactly when it is hardest to negotiate. This is ours, published where anybody can read it and compare it against the alternative.
The contract, before the service levels
Three month rolling. ICS does not tie customers into long-term service agreements. If you are not happy with the service in the first month you can simply say goodbye. After that, three months notice either way.
This is deliberate. A provider that locks you in for three years has no commercial reason to keep earning the work. We would rather retain you by being consistently good at it.
How we charge
We will not put a headline figure on a website, because the honest answer depends on how many people you have and what state your systems are in. What we will publish is the shape of the bill, so there are no surprises in it.
| Service | Charged | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Managed IT | Monthly, per user or per device | Headcount, number of servers, how many sites |
| Business Voice | Monthly, per seat | Seat count, whether you keep existing handsets |
| Contact Centre | Monthly, per agent | Concurrent agents, inbound or outbound, recording |
| Carrier platform | Per deployment, then per node | Capacity, interconnects, which edition |
| Messaging | Per message, tiered by volume | Monthly volume, destinations, HLR lookup |
| Software, websites | Fixed price per project, or hourly | Scope. We quote after scoping, not before |
| Fibre and field work | Per project, or day rate per technician | Crew size, duration, travel |
| Repairs and training | Hourly | Time on the bench or in the room |
- The audit is free. We look at what you are running and quote against it at no charge, whether or not you engage us.
- Three month rolling. No long-term lock-in, so the price has to keep being worth paying.
- Out-of-scope work is quoted, not absorbed silently. You approve it before it happens.
- No charge for travel inside the Bay of Plenty and Waikato on contracted work.
How to raise something
| Channel | Detail | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Telephone | +64 7 347 7044 | 24/7/365 |
| info@icsservices.nz | 24/7/365 | |
| CRM portal | Ticket raised and tracked to closure | 24/7/365 |
| Instant messaging | For existing customers, by arrangement | Business hours |
| On site | Bay of Plenty and Waikato | Dispatched by severity |
Every issue raised through any channel is recorded in the trouble-ticketing system, so it is tracked, monitored and formally closed rather than lost in somebody's inbox.
How severity is decided
Severity is about business impact, not about how loudly it was reported. It is assigned at logging and can be revised as the picture changes.
| Level | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| S1 Critical | The business cannot trade. Total loss of a core service with no workaround. | Site network down, phone system down, server unavailable |
| S2 High | Severe degradation, or a critical fault with a workaround in place. | Calls failing intermittently, one site of several offline |
| S3 Medium | A component is faulty but the business continues to operate. | A single user cannot print, one handset faulty |
| S4 Low | Requests, questions, changes and scheduled work. | New starter setup, a configuration change, advice |
What we commit to
| Severity | Acknowledgement | Work begins |
|---|---|---|
| S1 Critical | Within 30 minutes | Within 1 hour |
| S2 High | Within 1 hour | Within 4 hours |
| S3 Medium | Within 4 hours | Next business day |
| S4 Low | Within 1 business day | By agreement |
- Acknowledgement means a named person has the issue and has told you so. It is not an automated ticket receipt.
- Work begins means diagnosis has actually started, not that it has been queued.
- Restoration time is not committed to for faults whose cause is outside our control, such as a carrier outage or a hardware failure awaiting a part. Status updates continue at the agreed interval regardless.
- On-site attendance follows where a fault cannot be cleared remotely, dispatched same day for S1 and S2 within the Bay of Plenty and Waikato. Travel time depends on where you are; see the coverage map on the home page.
- S1 and S2 are answered around the clock. S3 and S4 are worked during business hours, 8am to 5pm weekdays.
Escalation, if you are not getting anywhere
An escalation path only works if it is written down before you need it. This one is short, because the company is small enough that the managing director is genuinely reachable.
Support engineer
First point of contact, and where the large majority of issues are resolved.
Service desk lead
Escalate if an acknowledged issue has not progressed within the committed window.
Managing Director
Muhammad Asif. Escalate at any point where you believe the response is inadequate.
What is in scope, and what is not
In scope
- Products and platforms supplied by ICS
- Hardware supplied and installed by ICS
- Systems ICS has been contracted to manage, whoever supplied them
- Support desk access through all published channels
- Trouble-ticket tracking through to formal closure
Out of scope
- Hardware and third-party systems procured by you directly, unless separately agreed in writing
- Faults in a third-party carrier or internet service, beyond diagnosis and liaison
- Software vendors we have no contractual relationship with, beyond acting on your behalf
- Work outside the agreed service description, which is quoted separately rather than absorbed silently
This page describes the standard commitment. Where a contract states something different, the contract governs.
Compare this against what you have now
If your current provider will not show you theirs, that is itself an answer.