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Request for Comments - Regional NRT Clock Implementation

Request for comments

Need

We've identified our current NRT SLA measurement clocks continue counting during non-business hours, causing breaches when customers reply at the end of an engineer's working day or during weekends.

As part of Investigate and improve NRT breaches we have identify that some breaches could be avoided if clocks ran on regional hours.

Some challenges that have been identify:

  • Customers replying right at the end of a region's working day cause NRT breaches when the engineer doesn't see the reply until the following day
  • Engineers lose 12-14 hours of their NRT window when customers reply after their shift ends
  • This particularly impacts "normal" (8 hours) and "high" (4 hours) priority tickets

Currently, our NRT clocks run on Pacific business hours (Sunday 15:00 to Friday 17:00 Pacific), which doesn't align with the regional working patterns of our global support teams. This creates artificial pressure and breaches that don't reflect actual customer service quality or engineer responsiveness during their working hours.

Approach

We propose regionalizing NRT clocks so that they only count during the assigned engineer's regional business hours, similar to how we could implement this for different time zones.

Benefit

  • Eliminates artificial NRT breaches caused by off-hours customer responses
  • Reduces stress and pressure from unrealistic SLA expectations
  • Allows engineers to focus on quality responses during their working hours
  • Better work-life balance by not penalizing engineers for not working outside business hours
  • More realistic expectations aligned with regional business hours
  • Engineers can provide more thoughtful, quality responses when they're actually working
  • Maintains the same level of actual responsiveness during business hours

Competition / Alternatives

Alternative 1: Status Quo with Process Workarounds

  • Continue current Pacific business hours for all NRT clocks
  • Implement holding macros and frequent status updates to reset timers
  • Drawbacks: Creates busy work, artificial communication, doesn't solve root cause