BIM Support Policy

(BIM) Catrina Ahlbach

Broadcast Interactive Media - Support Policy

BIM Support Policy, Updated: 12/05/2011

Customer Support
Support requests include, but are not limited to, the following:
  1. Setting up or updating your BIMVid box.
  2. Creating or fulfilling RFQs or SOWs.
  3. Creating new sections or users.
  4. Anything involving the creation or posting of new code or CSS work.
  5. Providing reports.

(Please see an expanded non-inclusive list of billable vs. non-billable items, below.)

During our regular business hours of 9am - 7pm ET (8am - 6pm CT), Monday through Friday, these requests should be submitted via BIM's online support system at http://www.broadcast-interactive.com/help. These requests will be responded to during business hours within two business days.

You may also call the toll-free support hotline at 877-325-3877. Normal support requests will be inserted into the general support queue and will be responded to during business hours within two business days. Other requests or messages will be forwarded to the appropriate support specialist.

Use of BIM's online support system is necessary to provide the most efficient service to all of our clients by allowing us to schedule support and development projects among our staff.

After-Hours Emergency Support
If you experience an emergency issue outside these hours or over the weekend, call Broadcast Interactive Media's Emergency Support phone at 914-462-9955 to speak with the BIM emergency support specialist on duty or leave a message. We will reply to your call within 30 minutes.

Guidelines for What Constitutes an Emergency
1) Complete site outage.
2) CMS outage.
3) Video publishing system (aka BIMVid) outage.
4) All advertisements missing.
5) Video or prerolls not playing, site-wide.
6) Feedloader outage.

If an outage is confirmed, the above issues will be resolved at no charge. All other calls to the emergency phone or off-hours emergency cases submitted, including requests to troubleshoot third-party code¹, may be subject to a rate of $175 per incident. If it is determined that any of the above types of outages are the result of client or end user error², the call will also be considered billable. If you have any questions about how this would apply in any given situation, please contact BIM for more details.

Routine customer support requests will not be handled during off-hours by the BIM emergency support specialist on duty. Please see the list above for examples of routine support requests.


In the interest of being able to accurately schedule out support and development support time, we've instituted the following policy changes for support during regular business hours:

Request for Quote (aka Development Request)
The client will be charged at least 15 minutes of technical support time for a BIM developer to analyze and respond to your request. Estimated support and/or development time necessary to complete your project is independent of the date by which we can complete the project.

This RFQ will expire within one week of providing our quote. If we do not hear back from you with approval to proceed within that week, a new request will have to be submitted and the project's timeline will be affected.

RFQs will not be added to the development calendar until they have been approved by the station. At that time, we will provide an estimated date by which we will complete the project. This schedule is subject to the current support case load, upcoming scheduled projects, and developer availability.


Standard Response Times By Priority
Emergency priority cases will be responded to within 30 minutes. Please review the list above for what constitutes an Emergency; any requests that are marked as emergencies that do not meet those criteria may be subject to a $175 fee. After-hours, please submit a case and place a phone call to our after-hours line.

High priority cases will be responded to within 24 hours or by end of next business day. If you have time-sensitive requests, this is an appropriate priority to assign your case. However, please note that any request with a requested delivery date that is shorter than two business days will be subject to a rush fee (billable time, times two).

Medium and Low priority cases will be responded to within 2 business days.

Depending on the nature of your case, the item may or may not be fully resolved within the windows stated above. More complicated requests may have a longer timeline for resolution.


¹Broadcast Interactive Media accepts 3rd party scripts/code if 3rd party had coded scripts/code to widely accepted Web standards. We will not offer any support of 3rd party scripts/code. This includes items such as JavaScript widgets and Flash banner ads. BIM will add the scripts/code to the client site as-is. Any client using these will be doing so at their own responsibility, support and risk.

BIM is able to offer some limited support to diagnose general problems, but will not offer advice, support, troubleshooting or diagnosis of any 3rd party code or product not provided or hosted by a partner of BIM. This includes, but is not limited to, computer applications or software, and local network, hardware, or browser configurations. Any work performed by BIM on 3rd party code or products may be subject to a fee of $175.

²To include, but not limited to, incorrectly assigned or poorly formatted pre-roll ads, videos or content that have not been targeted, deviations from BIM-recommended workflows, ad campaigns that have not been pushed live or assigned to the desired section(s), and providing assistance regarding browser settings that may be causing the problem.

Billable items (non-exclusive):
  • Creating new sections
  • Creating/deactivating/editing CMS users
  • Creating resource aliases
  • Site design changes (CSS, modules layout or configuration)
  • Changes to site navigation
  • Modifying or adding privacy policy or EEO reports
  • Adding 3rd party code (widgets, tracking, ads, etc.; please refer to our 3rd party script support)
  • Contest creation or modification (YouNews/UGC or Survey v2)
  • Trafficking ads via the CMS AdServer (Pre-roll and DART ad trafficking is directly billable by the BIM AdOps team and cannot be counted against support allocations)
  • Fixing issues, within BIM systems or products, that are the direct result of client actions (e.g., content targeted or saved incorrectly, deviations from standard workflows, etc.)
  • Creating, editing or publishing any content (except that which is allocated by contract, such as video clipping)
  • Gathering data from reports that are accessible by the station, either via the CMS Reports tab or outside of the CMS (e.g., counting Twitter posts)
  • Creating modules
  • Phone or case time to troubleshoot non-BIM-related computer or networking problems
  • Newsletter creation or modification
  • XML imports and exports, as completed by the Support team (some feeds may require custom development and will be billed separately)
  • Creating or editing outbound RSS/XML feeds
  • New product or feature definition and discovery (aka, "creating a Statement of Work")
  • Providing front-end support for a non-BIM-supported browser (IE7 and below, Firefox 3 and below, Chrome 13 and below, Opera, etc.)

Non-Billable:
  • CMS or BIMVid training for new client and personnel, as well as periodic refresher training 6-12 months thereafter. Training MUST be scheduled in advance according to support staff availability. Immediate training needs may be billable. Training outside of business hours is billable.
  • Phone or e-mail time to discuss best practices.
  • Phone or e-mail time to discuss contractual obligations.
  • Bug fixes; those issues or outages that are NOT the direct result of client actions.

Story Created: May 30, 2008 at 11:04 AM CST

Story Updated: Dec 5, 2011 at 5:39 PM CST