Unsponsored TLD Agreement: Appendix C, Section F (.info)

(26 April 2001)

Functional Specifications

Section F—Afilias Customer Support Services

Afilias' Customer Support Services will be organized into the following departments.

1. Front line customer support
2. Administrative/billing/financial support
3. Technical support

Front Line Customer Support

The front line support is the first point of contact for Afilias Registrars. This 24/7 operation will be able to answer general registrar questions. When the answer is not available or the registrar is not satisfied with the answer, a service support case is opened and a support ticket is issued. These support tickets are escalated to either the technical support team or the administrative/financial/billing support team depending on the nature of the problem.

Methods of contact that will be supported by customer support will include: telephone, fax, postal mail and e-mail.

Administrative/Financial/Billing Support

The administrative/financial/billing support team will deal with Registrars' business, account management, financial and billing issues. Examples that fall into these categories include:

• Registrar account balance inquiries
• Registrar low-balance warning notifications
• Crediting a Registrar's account after payment
• Legal issues related to the registry-registrar agreement
• Administrative issues for the acceptance of new registrars

The support team will have guidelines to ensure a conduit exists for escalation to higher levels of Afilias management with respect to unresolved administrative/billing/financial issues.

Technical Support

The technical support team is responsible for dealing with Registrars' technical issues. Afilias shall provide a complete package of support services through the Technical Support Group (TSG). These services shall be dedicated primarily to Authorized Registrars, although inquiries from potential registrars, or those in evaluation stages shall be supported by a subgroup of the TSG. Overall, the TSG shall attempt to provide around the clock, real time professional support ranging from basic inquiries to high-level operations critical technical support.

Afilias' operation staff shall be available 24/7/365, with required members of the department on call. Escalation procedures shall be in place ensuring that management is notified of service outages in a timely manner.

Access to Registry Data

The TSG shall have access to Registry data sufficient to support the Authorized Registrar, to the extent that current operating status can be determined, response to specific registrar queries about registrar specific data or specific transactions can be provided. Afilias employees shall be required to properly identify the Authorized Registrar before providing any registrar critical data, and shall be prohibited from providing information about other Authorized Registrar operations.

Notifications

Afilias TSG shall be responsible for notifying Authorized Registrars of upcoming maintenance and outages with strict requirements regarding advance notice. At a minimum, all planned outages and maintenance shall be announced at least 7 days prior to the scheduled date. Further, the TSG shall be required to provide immediate notice of unplanned or unscheduled outages and maintenance.

Customer Escalation Process

The TSG will operate with an escalation device. Normally support calls or other forms of communication shall start with the lowest level of support, and be escalated should the first level of support be insufficient. In cases where higher levels of support are immediately apparent (all levels of support staff will be trained in identifying these) the escalation chain may be jumped. Also, should the time limit expire with no notice, the support level may be escalated. The escalation levels and response requirements are as follows:

Level 1

Technical based question, usually unique to the registrar that may require support from a registry systems operator or engineer. Responses to requests for information or technical support shall be provided within one hour unless is it deemed to be a Level 2 incident.

Level 2

Systems outage involving non-critical operations to the registry affecting one or more registrars only, but not the entire system. Response reports shall be provided every 30 minutes, by no less than a qualified registry systems engineer.

Level 3

Catastrophic outage, or disaster recovery involving critical operations to the registry overall. Response reports shall be provided every 15 minutes, by no less than a senior registry systems engineer.

Level	Incident Duration	Severity	Position	Name	After hours Number	Business hours Number
Level 1	1 hour	Low	Customer and Technical Support Manager	TBD	TBD Cell Phone	TBD
Level 2	2 hours	Med	Director Operations	TBD	TBD Voice mail connected to pager	TBD
Level 3	4 hours	High	Managing Director	TBD	TBD Voice mail connected to pager	TBD

Security of Customer Support Service

Since the registry customer service will also be able to take actions on behalf of registrars, the personal communication process must be secure as well.
Registrars will have to supply a list of specific individuals (5 to 10 people) that are authorized to contact the registry. Each individual will also be assigned a pass phrase. Any phone requests made by a registrar to registry customer service will have to come from someone on the authorized list, and require the pass phrase to be supplied. In the event that an attempt is made to contact the registry customer service on behalf of a registrar, but appropriate authentication is not provided, the registry will make contact with the registrar to inform it of a breach of security protocol.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

In order to fairly judge the quality of its customer services, Afilias will hire an outside party to perform customer satisfaction surveys on a regular basis. The result of these surveys will be used to identify and correct problems with the customer service process. Afilias will also use these results to measure improvements in customer satisfaction.

Page Updated 24-Dec-2002
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