Understanding The Different Levels of Help Desk Support

Is there anything strange in your neighborhood? What if there is something strange and it doesn't seem right? What is Help Desk Support? Do you see things that go through your mind? An invisible man sleeping in your bed? Who will you call? ... And if you need to reset your password, the printer won't work, you can't update Adobe Reader, you can't access the network or your computer freezes? Who will you call? Ghost hunters?! No! Thanks, Ray Parker, but no, you're going to call the help desk.

As you may already know and hope you know, the Help Desk Part Time is an essential part of customer service. These are the superheroes who solve your customers' problems who are probably extremely frustrated. Resolving customer problems as quickly as possible significantly increases customer satisfaction, which in turn has a positive impact on future sales. In other words, having an excellent help desk has an impact on your company's life. Generally accessible through a free phone number, technical support now uses the web to support customers via chat tools and social networks.

Usually, companies start using a single-level customer support system: a single point of contact to manage questions or solve problems. However, when a company grows, it tends to need more than a single-level model. This means that they are moving to a multi-level support system.

For example, if you sell project management software to companies, you can receive questions such as: I forgot my username and password, what should I do? Or, how can I handle a bug that prevents me from keeping track of time on an iPad? In the latter case, you need experts to solve this problem. In the first case, a less complex query on user names and passwords would not require a programmer. If the appropriate levels are configured in technical support, this allows you to allocate support resources to meet customer needs.

Level-1 Support

This is the basic level of customer support. The customer representative is a generalist with extensive product knowledge and may not understand the inner workings. In this case, they will identify a customer's needs and provide advice on how to handle a problem.

Typically, these solutions are available in a FAQ or knowledge base. Employees at this level use a knowledge base in most customer calls. Level 1 support generally provides 24-hour service and is outsourced. When a level 1 support employee is unable to resolve the problem, he classifies it and forwards it to the appropriate level 2 employee. At this point, the customer is issued with a problem tracking ticket.

Level-II Support

Level II assistance includes technical knowledge and is composed of technicians with problem solving skills beyond level 1 employees. Level II help desk employees are employed by the company concerned or subcontracted to a third party. Technicians usually have a specialization and will determine which specialization best suits the customer's needs before assisting him. If their technical specialization can help the customer, technology determines whether this problem is a new problem or an existing problem. At this stage it is possible to perform advanced diagnostic tools and data analysis.

If the problem persists, the level II specialist then looks for an alternative solution or solution in the database. The customer is then informed on how to solve his problem. However, in some cases there may not be a solution as it is an open bug. In this case, the level II desktop adds an entry to the list of bugs. So, depending on the number of cases where customers experience the same problem, the help desk can ask developers to fix the bug.

If a customer encounters a new problem, further analysis is needed to see if it can be treated. The help desk employee would then explain to the customer how to solve the problem. However, if technology cannot solve the problem at this level, the problem goes to level III. At this level, the problem is attributed to a developer of the company responsible for the product.

Level III Support

Level III requires a person with specialized skills in addition to the work done by level II technicians. This support is generally provided by specialists involved in product development. They deal with complex problems. To solve the problem, they will collect as much data as possible from level 1 and level 2 employees.

In my previous job as a Microsoft developer on the Windows OS team, I used to report the toughest operating system bugs to support staff around the world and crash dumps reported when an application stops working. Sometimes solving the problem involves a deeper analysis of the operating system. Resolving the problem may require a Windows update.

Level IV Support

This level exists only in the case of multiple suppliers. For example, if you are an application developer and the problem is in resolving the problem with the mobile operating system provided by another company, you are simply asking the other company for assistance.