Ongoing Support Contracts

An ad-hoc sup­port agreement is use­ful if you need occa­sion­al help with your site, but if you fore­see the need for a more involved and proac­tive sup­port­ing role then we rec­om­mend a retain­er agree­ment. In a retain­er, we work close­ly with your inter­nal teams and may even be inte­grat­ed into some of your busi­ness process­es. We may col­lab­o­rate with your sales team on an impor­tant pre­sen­ta­tion. Or we may con­sult with employ­ees dur­ing reg­u­lar design reviews. In addi­tion, we remain active­ly engaged in your web­site, mak­ing the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal updates and work­ing with you on changes and new features. 

About the Agreement

With this approach, you pay us a set month­ly fee. We’ll then guar­an­tee a cer­tain response as well as a set num­ber of hours per month to tack­le any issues that arise.

Like the ad-hoc sup­port agree­ment, this agree­ment will also outline:

• What work we’ll be able to help you with
  
• How you can get in touch with us
• How quick­ly we’ll respond
• How many hours we’ll guar­an­tee for you
• What hap­pens if we use all those hours
• How quick­ly we’ll imple­ment a fix or fol­low up
• How long the agree­ment will last
• How you’ll be billed

This more com­pre­hen­sive approach will ben­e­fit you if you think you’ll need more tech­ni­cal involve­ment with your site day-to-day or if you need to have a team on-hand to deal with any emer­gency issues or downtime. 

The upside 👍🏻 We’re there for you when you need us with­out hav­ing to wait. We are direct­ly con­nect­ed to your inter­nal teams. 

The down­side 👎🏻 You might end up pay­ing for us but not need­ing us every month. 

Con­tract

Whether you’re inter­est­ed in an ad-hoc approach or the ongo­ing approach, we’ll set up a con­tract for you.

Here’s a break­down of some of the key areas that it will cover.

Scope of Work

Basi­cal­ly, this is what is and isn’t cov­ered by the agree­ment. We’ll out­line what sort of work falls under sup­port. If it’s not with­in this scope we might sug­gest putting togeth­er a sep­a­rate stand-along state­ment of work. 

Here’s a broad idea of what’s usu­al­ly cov­ered in these agreements: 

Tech­ni­cal support:

• Bug­fix­es
• Serv­er updates or upgrades
• Tech­ni­cal consultation

Design Sup­port:

• Pre­sen­ta­tion design
• Social media post design
• Dia­grams, icons, and illustrations
• Design con­sul­ta­tion

Your Hours

This is the num­ber of guar­an­teed hours we’ll set aside for you each month. 

In the rare case that you need addi­tion­al hours beyond this then they will be charged at a dif­fer­ent ​“out of scope” rate. These hours may vary depend­ing on how robust the retain­er is and what we’ve agreed to cov­er with­in it. 

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Here we’ll out­line how you can raise issues with us. We have four approaches:

• Sup­port system
• Email
• Slack
• Phone

Using our sup­port sys­tem is the best-bet as it means it’s eas­i­er for us to man­age the request and get start­ed on it. If you con­tact us via email or Slack we’ll have to take the time to enter the request our­selves, so we rec­om­mend using our sup­port sys­tem. If you would like for us to be involved in your inter­nal man­age­ment sys­tems, Asana, Trel­lo, Jira please let us know. 

Response Time

This out­lines the time with­in which we’ll guar­an­tee a response time by after receiv­ing your inquiry.

Bear in mind that this isn’t the time we’ll be able to actu­al­ly fix an issue, it’s just the time it will take for us to get back to you to dis­cuss it.

Usu­al­ly this will be 12 hours.

Time Esti­mate

Once we’ve received a request we’ll get back to you with an esti­mate of the time we think it’s going to take as well as when we will start work­ing on it. We’ll wait to hear from you to con­firm and then get work­ing on it with­in a par­tic­u­lar time. If there are any issues along the way we’ll get back in touch with your to keep you in the loop. If it’s an emer­gency, we’ll get on it ASAP.

Usu­al­ly we’ll begin with­in 1 day of receiv­ing the request

Pric­ing

This will include the ongo­ing month­ly fee as well as the hourly rate for any addi­tion­al hours required. This addi­tion­al rate will be low­er than the cor­re­spond­ing ​“ad-hoc” rate.

Pay­ment

You’ll be auto­mat­i­cal­ly billed on the first of every month. We can arrange the most con­ve­nient approach with you.

Dura­tion

These agree­ments will usu­al­ly have a dura­tion on them after which we can both reassess.

Usu­al­ly this is 3 – 6 months

If you’ve got any ques­tions about this, get in touch at hello@​weareferal.​com