Handoff etiquette
"Urgent" is a business-impact word, not a coverage promise.
Nothing on this site - including the CAD reference bands - implies a specific response time, an after-hours desk, or 24/7 coverage. Those are written terms, agreed deliberately, or they do not exist.
Defining urgency
Triage by business impact, not by tone.
| Signal | Likely urgency | Handling |
|---|---|---|
| A team cannot work at all | High business impact | Prioritized within the agreed lane and hours. |
| A single user is inconvenienced | Routine | Normal queue, regardless of how it is phrased. |
| A security-sensitive event | Escalation, not routine urgency | Routed through the escalation matrix, not the urgent-request path. |
| A request arrives outside agreed hours | Depends entirely on the written term | Covered only if a specific after-hours term exists. |
The default posture
No after-hours coverage exists unless it is written down.
Inside agreed business hours, a request flagged as urgent receives priority triage within the qualified lane - it does not receive a promised resolution time, because none is published here. Outside agreed hours, the honest default is that nothing is covered until a specific written term says otherwise. Silently answering an occasional after-hours message does not create a standing commitment, and should not be allowed to.
Setting the expectation with your client
Say what is true, not what sounds reassuring.
Inside hours, flagged urgent: "We have this marked as high priority and are working it now within our agreed hours."
Outside agreed hours, no after-hours term: "This falls outside our current coverage hours. It will be picked up first thing when support resumes."
A true emergency outside scope: "This is outside what we can act on directly - here is what we know and the options available to you right now."
These are examples of structure, not scripts to copy verbatim or promised response language.
If coverage hours matter to your offer
Name it as a written term, not an assumption.
- Which hours are covered, and by what definition of "covered"
- What "urgent" means for triage purposes inside those hours
- Whether any after-hours term exists at all, and what it actually includes
- Who is contacted when a request falls outside every agreed term
Review the full escalation matrix →
See how a monitoring alert's after-hours handling gets qualified →
Bring your real coverage expectation, not a hope.
If after-hours coverage matters to your offer, say so early - it changes what gets qualified and written into the agreement.