PURPOSE: This article describes the high-level process to handle incidents at APEXX.



KEY INFO

APEXX has a set incident management process that is triggered in the case of internal (i.e. APEXX-related) incidents.

External incident notifications will be communicated to affected merchants until resolution. 

The Support team is the first point of contact for any incidents, and will be in charge of all merchant communications. 

An RCA is provided after the incident has been resolved to affected merchants.






TABLE OF CONTENTS


TABLE OF CONTENTS




1. Incident definitions


Types of incident


There can be external or internal incidents. 

  • External incidents refer to the incidents experienced by our third-party partners which affect transaction processing via APEXX.

  • Internal incidents are APEXX-related incidents.

The processes for each incident type varies. 


When will the APEXX incident management process be triggered?


The APEXX incident management process will only trigger for incidents that have been assigned a priority of P1 or P2, as the impact on merchants is serious and requires immediate action. 


The incident management process can be triggered in or out of hours. 



Who is involved in the APEXX incident management process?


The Support team will first assess the priority and perform technical triage. In the case of an APEXX-related incident, the incident will be escalated to the dedicated technical resources on-call, and the Incident Management team may be called out to coordinate the incident response. The Incident Management Team is composed of the Head of Support, the SVP Customer Experience, the Head of Portal, the Head of BA. 


2. The Incident Management Process


2.1. External incidents


APEXX Support team receives notifications and alerts from our all Partners onto our Support desk. In the event of an incident that is impacting our merchants (e.g. disruption to transaction processing), the Support team will contact the affected merchant(s) via the designated incident contacts, and report the issue as well as its associated impact. In this instance, as the incident is external to APEXX, the Support team would relay information and updates provided by our Partner. 

Once the incident is over, the Support team will request a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) from the Partner and communicate it to the affected merchants.


 NOTE 

 In this case the APEXX incident management process would not be triggered as the incident is not related to, and therefore cannot be resolved by, APEXX. Communications however would be provided and may be supervised, if needed by the Head of Support. 



2.2. Internal incidents 


Communications

  • The incident is flagged by the merchant

If the merchant has noticed an issue,  they should first seek to contact our Support team either via our Support inbox (support@apexx.global) or via our dedicated phone number (available only for emergencies) : +448081964720. 

In the case of an incident, updates and information will be communicated by the merchant either on the ticket that they raised, or on a new ticket if the merchant raised the incident via phone. 



  • The incident is flagged by APEXX 

Through our internal monitoring systems, we may be alerted of an issue that may require technical investigations and / or resolution on the APEXX side. In this case, we would send communications to affected merchants, either mass communications if more than one merchants is affected, or individual communications if only one merchant is affected. 

  • To ensure that APEXX incident notifications for both internal and external communications reach the correct recipients,  please provide the dedicated incident contacts.

  • It is recommended to create a unique APEXX-related incident inbox for ease of communications on the merchant’s side 




APEXX Incident Management Process

  • Triage : the Support team will triage the issue, either reported by the merchant or our internal alert. they will perform the preliminary technical investigation and define next steps. The Head of Support is alerted at this stage (in-hours only).

  • Technical escalation: the Support team will raise the issue to the technical team - if the incident occurs out-of-hours, the support team members on shift will get in touch with the technical contacts as per the on-call rota. 

  • Communications: when the issue has been confirmed, communications will be issued to affected merchants (see above).

  • Technical investigation: the technical contact on-call must investigate and provide a preliminary root cause. If in-hours, the ticket will be assigned to the relevant team for investigation.

  • Incident Management team call-out: if an incident occurs out of hours and requires the Incident Management team to be brought online, the Support team members on-shift will trigger the call-out. The latter depends on the technical investigation.

  • Resolution: when a resolution is found, the affected merchants will be notified on the same ticket, either via mass comms or individual updates.

  • RCA: after the resolution, APEXX team members involved in the incident will gather together for a post-mortem, after which the official RCA will be communicated to the affected merchants.