Technical support is not an easy task to do, and it needs extensive experience and knowledge. You can never provide technical support by yourselves, and even if you would, it would not yield results. That is why help desks and service desks exist, and customers can help IT service desk management with incidents or service requests. Technical support works and functions to provide various products and services to the people who use technology.
IT help desk remote offers assistance while connecting to a certain computer or device from another computer or device via networking or the internet. This is precisely what help desks and service desks do. Hence, we could say that they provide technical support to employees and customers alike.
Technical support is meant to come up with solutions to particular customer and employee issues. Technical support is a must for every business and organization since it can help improve the quality of customer service that an organization provides. In addition, it also helps develop and maintain departmental knowledge and provides self-service to clients who want to handle problems swiftly and independently.
Small businesses or small teams solely work towards handling internal and external concerns, and there is no one else to deal with the issues separately. This is where IT service desk management companies come in, offering consumers a robust, service-oriented, and customer-centric method of assisting.
However, in a big company, there are two teams. One is to solve the issues and concerns of employees who have technical doubts, and another is to provide customer service to customers with concerns.
Technical staff can quickly manage problems using remote help desk services, such as diagnosing errors, operating system support, upgrades or patch assistance, installation or other application support, antivirus support, or installation. Because of this, effective application service management is thought to include IT help desk remote services.
Categories of IT Help Desk Support
The IT help desk support is divided into four categories in total – L1, L2, L3, and L4. Here, we will discuss the first three levels, and later, we will outline the challenges in hiring support for these levels.
- L1 / Level 1
Level 1 is the most basic level of support that is provided. Support at this level is provided via phone and email, and a level 1 software engineer attends and responds to your emails and texts. In short, L1 is all about understanding the doubts and concerns of customers and then sending a ticket against them to L2 support. The engineers who work at L1 have basic knowledge about the services and goods and can solve only fundamental issues and problems like resetting passwords and installing software.
- L2 / Level 2
As we mentioned above, the main task of the L2 engineers is to work with the tickets that the L1 engineers sent them. However, this does not mean the L2 engineers cannot notice their problems and make their tickets. They surely can. L2 support engineers have more knowledge and larger skill sets than L1 engineers hence, they can solve slightly more complicated problems. They also provide process automation and root cause analysis.
- L3 / Level 3
This is the last and the essential level. This level solves the most critical and twisted technical issues. They are incredibly skilled engineers who handle important technical issues while assisting and helping engineers on the first and second levels. They come up with solutions for complex problems and also fix defects and make minor changes from time to time.
Challenges in Hiring Support & How to Deal With Them
Dividing the support tasks among people at different levels is extremely important and a must for every organization for many reasons. It helps address customer needs adequately, gives good customer service, manages issues smoothly, helps employees, and improves employee training.
However, there are some challenges that one has to face while hiring good support engineers for levels 1, 2, and 3. Let us take a brief look at those challenges.
- Mentioning Your Requirements to the Right Agencies
The first and foremost thing one must do before hiring support executives for levels 1, 2, and 3 is to find the perfect agent to recruit these people. Telling the recruitment companies precisely what you are looking for is extremely important. You might have a plethora of options and choices to choose from, but you have to settle on the ones that fit your list of requirements and needs. Before doing all this, you must first find a company that understands and respects your requirements and helps you get through with that.
- High Expenditures
It is not always physically possible for HR to get involved in finding the right group of people. So, they turn to recruitment agencies for help, which only helps us once we pay, and sometimes the costs can be too high. If you think the spendings and expenditures end once you pay the recruiter their fees, then you are far from right. The expenses go on and on. After you hire employees, you have to spend money on their welfare, safety, security, and proper wages.
- Lack of Knowledge and Expertise in the First Two Levels
The engineers you hire at the first two levels might only be capable of solving the essential issues and concerns that employees and customers come up with. Hence you cannot afford to stop the 2nd level you may also have to hire a Level 3 team that can deal with complex issues which the engineers at L1 and L2 cannot.
- Confidently Choosing Candidates That Are Reliable and Credible
This is the most crucial of all. If you do not choose reliable candidates and engineers, customer support won’t improve. The inefficiency of engineers is not affordable to a company, and incompetence is not a risk that can be taken. Hence you need people who are responsible and good at what they do. If you do not pick the right people, the burden may eventually be on you.
Comprehensive technical support is a must since it helps solve problems on hand more smoothly and efficiently. Having groups of people with different levels of expertise can make the job easier.
