What counts as a critical outage for a field service business, and how fast do you respond?

For a contractor, critical means anything that stops you booking or dispatching work: dispatch workstations down, the phone system down, internet down at the office, the server hosting your field software down, or a suspected security incident. Those carry our one hour response commitment.

Standard issues get four business hours. One tech's tablet acting up, a printer down, an application misbehaving for one user. Low priority requests such as new user setup or software questions get next business day.

Two honest notes on response times. First, response means a technician engaged and working, not an automated email confirming your ticket exists. Ask other providers which one they are promising. Second, for anything we monitor, we are frequently already working on it before you call, because the alert reaches us first.

We write your critical list into the agreement during onboarding, naming your specific systems. That prevents the argument at 7 AM about whether your situation qualifies.