Customer Support Services Policy

Owner: Customer Support and Success Manager
Effective from: 20/07/2026
Last reviewed: 22/07/2026
Next review: 22/07/2027

We aim to provide the highest level of customer service to all customers of The Social History Archive. We will clearly document the platform to support users to troubleshoot their own issues, proactively communicate with customers when issues arise, and respond to and conclude incoming tickets efficiently and to the highest standard. The Customer Support and Success Manager is responsible for the implementation and execution of this policy.

This policy applies to all customers of The Social History Archive, regardless of the nature of their purchase and/or subscription, or their duration as a customer. This policy describes how we ordinarily provide support. It does not create additional contractual rights or obligations. We may modify this policy at our sole discretion to reflect changes to our services, support arrangements, technology, legal obligations, or business operations. Where changes materially affect the support service provided to existing customers, we will give reasonable advance notice.

For further information on anything in this policy please contact support@thesocialhistoryarchive.com.

Knowledge base

Our knowledge base can be accessed via thesocialhistoryarchive.com/knowledge. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive, easy-to-use knowledge base that explains key functionalities of the system and proactively answers any questions users may have. To this end, we provide thorough documentation on the technical set-up of the product and articles explaining the end-user experience of using the product. As the product evolves, this knowledge base will be subject to continuous review in collaboration with our Product and Technical teams. We will create additional articles as features are added or the need for further information becomes clear.

Response and Resolution

To create a ticket in our support portal, please email support@thesocialhistoryarchive.com.

Our team is based in the UK and our standard support hours are between 9am and 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays observed by our team. Tickets received outside of these hours will be treated as having been received at the start of the next working day. We aim to provide an initial human response to all tickets within four working hours of receipt. This is a service target and not a guaranteed response time. We may exceed this target during periods of exceptional demand, staff absence, reduced team size, or circumstances beyond our reasonable control. When delays are foreseeable, we will endeavour to communicate this as proactively as possible.

Incoming tickets will typically be owned by the Customer Support and Success Manager, but other members of the DC Thomson History team may also take responsibility for tickets as required.

Given the highly varied nature of incoming support tickets, it is neither possible nor practical to provide a definitive timeframe for resolution of tickets. We will, however, always endeavour to ensure tickets are concluded as efficiently as possible. To support us in achieving this, we ask customers to familiarise themselves with our guidance for submitting effective support tickets, available on our knowledge base.

We are committed to making our site universally accessible and user friendly and aim to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at levels A and AA. Our most recent Accessibility Conformance Report is downloadable from our Accessibility Conformance Statement. Technical faults affecting accessibility may be reported through our normal support channel and will be handled in accordance with our standard support process. To report general accessibility issues with the platform, please contact accessibility@thesocialhistoryarchive.com. A member of our accessibility team will respond within five working days to identify how we can best meet your needs.

While investigating tickets, we will sometimes require input from other teams within the business. Where this is the case, we will communicate this transparently and explain our reasons for involving other teams. We will also explain any possible impact this might have on resolution timescales. Sharing information will be done in line with our Information Security Policy and our Privacy Policy. Customers should nonetheless refrain from including unnecessary personal or confidential information in tickets.

Prioritisation

During busy periods, it may be necessary for our teams to prioritise support tickets. Priority is determined by us and based on impact, severity, number of users affected, availability of a workaround, and any relevant time-sensitive activity (such as exams, assignments, ongoing research). We will also consider the reporter’s suggested priority, but the final priority will be determined by our team. The table below provides illustrative examples of incidents and the priority level they would typically be assigned.

Priority	Meaning
Critical	The Social History Archive is unavailable or unusable for all or most users, a business-critical function is unavailable, and no reasonable workaround exists.
High	A key feature or workflow is unavailable or significantly impaired for multiple users, with substantial operational impact and no reasonable workaround.
Medium	Functionality is degraded or unavailable for a limited number of users, but the overall impact is moderate or a reasonable workaround exists.
Low	A minor or cosmetic issue with little impact on normal use, or a general question, documentation correction or feature request.

These examples are indicative only. We may assign a different priority after considering the overall impact, urgency, number of users affected, availability of a workaround and any relevant time-sensitive activity.

Where we have to prioritise tickets, we will communicate this transparently and be clear about possible impacts this may have on timescales. If you believe a ticket has not been assigned the appropriate priority, please contact our Customer Support and Success Manager directly at matthew.weldon@thesocialhistoryarchive.com.

Ticket Statuses

Tickets in our help desk will be assigned one of four statuses at any given time, dependent on the stage of the ticket. If you feel that your ticket has been concluded incorrectly or prematurely, please contact our Customer Support and Success Manager directly at matthew.weldon@thesocialhistoryarchive.com.

Status	Meaning
New	A newly submitted ticket which has not yet been reviewed by a member of the support team.
Open	The ticket is actively being investigated by customer support or Technical/Product teams.
Pending	Information or action is required from the customer before the ticket can be progressed. We will normally issue an automated reminder after seven days. If we receive no response within fourteen calendar days, we may close the ticket. If the customer subsequently provides new information, the ticket may be reopened or a new ticket may be created.
Concluded	Our work on the ticket has ended. This may be because the issue has been resolved, a workaround has been provided, no further action is possible, the matter falls outside the scope of support, or we have not received information necessary to continue. We will normally explain the reason for closure.

Uptime commitment & proactive communication

Our System Availability commitment for The Social History Archive service is set out in full in the applicable Service Level Agreement Terms. In summary, the target is at least 99.5% System Availability during each calendar month. If there is any inconsistency between this summary and the applicable Service Level Agreement Terms, those terms will take precedence. Where ongoing incidents impact on system availability for some or all customers, we may decide to proactively issue a service announcement to ensure customers are kept informed. We will facilitate this using our Service Announcements mailing list.

Customers wishing to be added to/removed from the service announcements mailing list should contact support@thesocialhistoryarchive.com.

Feedback

We are committed to monitoring the quality of our support and improving where we can. To this end, we may issue a brief request for feedback by email after a ticket is concluded. We encourage users to be honest and let us know what worked well and what could work better. Users who would prefer not to receive these emails should contact support@thesocialhistoryarchive.com.