Providing customer satisfaction is critical to the success of any business. Find out how a layered IT support system can help you deliver a better customer experience.
One of the keys to customer satisfaction and retention in enterprises is the level of technical support available to customers. With this in mind, companies are always looking for measures to provide a quality customer experience. For tech companies, the focus is on providing technical support in a way that quickly resolves customer technical issues.
Since customer complaints can range from simple to advanced questions, it is essential to split IT support into different levels or tiers to assign support teams based on expertise level.
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This post discusses the different levels or levels of technical support and why companies should have these levels.
What is IT Support?
Technical or IT support is a term used to refer to a special support service that companies provide to resolve consumer-related issues with their IT product. Unlike conventional support, technical support is created to provide user-specific solutions to problems. Technical support varies in complexity; therefore, many companies see the need to organize this support at different levels.
When providing technical support, companies consider many factors, such as their range of products and services and the level of expertise needed to address user-related issues. Depending on your business venture, your technical support team can range from a small team to a large team made up of employees with different skills and areas of expertise.
Typically, your IT support team will provide technical assistance through chats, phone calls, email, online tutorials and videos.
Levels of IT Support
With few exceptions, typical IT support is organized into three different levels. Structuring your IT support in different flows has many advantages.
- Facilitates problem solving
- Ensures experts are assigned to solve problems
- Helps strategically respond to customer needs
- Creates a positive customer experience
- Ensures timelines and protocols are established to resolve issues faster
- Helps get feedback and suggestions for product development
What is Level 1 Support?
The first layer in the IT support chain is Level 1 support. It is the support layer with the least expertise in technical issues. Typically, the employees who are part of this support layer have a limited understanding of technical issues.
The following roles can represent Level 1 support in a business organization.
- Collect customer information and questions
- Attending customer phone calls
- Respond to customer emails and text messages
- Conduct basic surveys to determine each customer’s level of support
- Assign tickets for Level 2 support if it’s an issue they don’t have an answer for
- Provide product information to customers
- Resolve common issues related to customer login, such as username and password, hardware and software authentication, and installation issues.
Level 1 support in any business organization is like the front desk where customers submit their complaints before they are routed to the appropriate department for expert handling. Those who are part of the level 1 technical support team must include junior level support staff and interns who do not have access to sensitive company information.
What is Level 2 Support?
The Level 2 support takes over from the Level 1 support. It is a higher stage of IT support that is responsible for dealing with more in-depth issues in a business organization. Level 2 support technicians have more experience assessing problems and providing solutions that Level 1 technicians cannot handle.
Below are specific roles that the Level 2 support team covers:
- Determines the level of support needed by studying how much support was provided in level 1
- Conducts an in-depth analysis of the problem
- Ask for Level 3 tickets if the solution is not available on Level 2
- Must be able to provide detailed product information to users
What is Level 3 Support?
Subject matter experts typically staff the Level 3 support team. For example, the team may include experts such as hardware engineers, software developers, architects, and security professionals. This group has access to classified information in the organization. The Level 3 support team is expected to have the skills to resolve any issue that could not be resolved with Level 2 support.
Sometimes, when a user contacts Level 3 support, the experts look at the code and designs at the back to determine the source of the problem. The technicians can ask the manufacturer to modify a product in response to a problem and then pass the repairs on to Level 1 and Level 2 support.
When setting up Level 3 support for your business, look for experts with IT experience in your products or experience in a related product.
Why Enterprises Should Have Different Support Levels
Here are the benefits of dividing your technical support into different levels:
- Provides quick resolution of tasks
- Facilitates feedback on user questions
- Improves customer experience by providing reliable customer support
- Ensures only experts handle customer issues
Things to consider before getting started with tiered technical support
Assembling a technical support team can be challenging, especially as your business grows. In the initial phase, a structure is created. By doing this, you can determine your needs and situations. For example, if you’re a software company, your users are likely to face numerous technical issues, unlike service or retail customers. Therefore, determine what types of topics and issues fit into each tier using the roles of each support tier shown above.
After you develop your support system, you need to think about how you can support your employees so they can continue to deliver quality customer experiences. It is critical to list the best qualifications for your IT support staff. Strong oral and written communication, technical skills, empathy, attention to detail and other qualities can be part of this.
