A few words on ticket priority level and urgency

I want to take a couple of minutes to share an update about Priority 4, our new ticket priority level, as well as some insight into what happens in the support team when you open a Priority 1 ticket.

Puppet Support is committed to solving your problems. Our support engineers around the world take great pride in delivering service that consistently rates in the high 90% for customer satisfaction.

You’ve let us know we had a gap in the type of tickets you can open with us. "I have a general question about the product or need to share information with you. The P3 definition doesn't work for me, my services are not impacted, and I’m not using a workaround." Based on your feedback, we created a new priority level, Priority 4. The definition is: “Puppet functioning and performing as normal. Question or informational Request.” The Service Level Agreement (SLA) for response is the next business day and I’m happy to report that our response times are well within the SLA.

We also know and understand the stress of working under pressure. You have a catastrophe and an urgent need for help, and in the moment, it feels like the most logical thing to do is to open a Priority 1 ticket. It may not cross your mind to check that your situation matches the definition of a Priority 1: Critical production Puppet functionality is inoperative or severely degraded. No workaround is available.

When a P1 ticket arrives in Support, it triggers "all hands on deck". Engineers already working on other tickets sort those by urgency and re-prioritize their work in order to address the P1. As quickly as possible, we want to understand what's going on, review the information you sent, and start troubleshooting.

When we see a new P1 ticket, it is not always immediately obvious if it does not match P1 criteria. By the time we know, it is often too late to stop the series of events that P1 triggers.

My request to you is please think about the urgency of your issue when you open a ticket. This lets the engineers focus on your specific needs and respond to everyone with the appropriate level of urgency.

Rest assured, we meet the SLA response commitment for all ticket levels 99.4% of the time.

If the business situation you experience is not critical, expect to be asked to lower the priority. This does not mean we won't treat your concern with urgency. It means we are providing the appropriate assistance according to the business impact.

Think about this like calling the emergency phone number, 911, 999, or your country’s equivalent. You are asked what the emergency is, and if it’s not deemed critical, you are redirected to a non-emergency number.

We are proud of the service we provide our customers and appreciate your partnership with Puppet.

Claire Hernandez

Senior Director, Global Customer Support