Establishing and maintaining good assistance ensures that your staff or clients will not be left alone with software problems, and that you will not contribute to these frightening statistics. Companies use the multi-Leveled IT support model to better allocate support resources and take into consideration the expertise of each specialist as well as the complexity of the issues they can resolve. They may either construct it from the ground up or split the help they currently have into Levels.

0 is the lowest level

Level 0 of the support system is intended to help users discover answers to inquiries about software functionality and solve small problems without having to contact support employees.

What is the best way to determine this level? Prepare extensive self-support materials and upload them on your website (if these are the docs that go with the product you sell) or in a corporate network (for internal IT support). User manuals, FAQs, articles on how to solve software problems, and basic and advanced training on how to use software effectively are examples of resources that may be developed and maintained by technical and marketing experts. After each upgrade of supported solutions, revise self-support documentation and add new information as appropriate.

As soon as end users gain access to self-help resources, the frequency of basic repeated tickets received by L1 agents decreases, and their workload decreases.

Even if you’ve prepared through self-help resources, be aware that some users may prefer to contact a support staff rather than solve problems on their own.

Specifics of IT assistance for businesses. The so-called peer-support enabled by superusers can further improve this degree of company IT help. Superusers are your personnel who have worked with supported software before and have been assigned a set number of business hours to assist their colleagues with software questions.

You may also ask a vendor to produce appropriate documentation for self-support if you acquire internal software from them. Specifications for software product support. Self-support components may be integrated directly into a software product, which not only improves self-support but also user adoption by removing the need for users to scroll through many pages of self-support resources. Pop-up hints describing what different interface elements signify and how to complete actions are the most typical instances of such components (including step-by-step guides).

Level 1

In summary: Answering common queries regarding programme functionality and resolving simple difficulties.

Agents at this level of IT assistance, often known as the help desk, answer common inquiries about software use and resolve minor difficulties such addressing login issues, reinstalling basic apps, and verifying correct software and hardware specifications.

What is the best way to determine this level? Prepare scripts for support agents so that they can deal with L1 difficulties in a step-by-step manner. At this level, tickets are handled by specialists with rudimentary technical understanding who have been taught to follow problem-solving scripts. If the help desk is unable to resolve a problem using the scripts available, they escalate the case to L2 with all relevant information, including a description of the problem and the environment (computer model and name, software with which a supported solution works), an error message displayed on the screen, screenshots, user steps preceding the issue, and the scope of the work performed to resolve the problem.Specifics of IT assistance for businesses.

If you elect to outsource this level apart from the others, you’ll need a vendor who can communicate with the other support levels involved in the ultimate case resolution. Otherwise, delays in communication, a lack of specifics on software issues, and other factors may make it difficult to resolve service requests, and a protracted resolution time may have a negative impact on your organization.

Specifications for software product support. When customers contact your support staff, L1 is what gives them their initial impression of the level of service you provide.

Level 2

Level 2 is more in-depth tech help that deals with difficulties that L1 staff can’t address. Agents should often review logs and comprehend the software with which a supported solution is integrated to remedy these issues. If the L2 support professionals are unable to resolve the issue, it is escalated to the next support level for further in-depth code analysis.

What is the best way to determine this level? You should hire software product and corporate IT support professionals who have a comprehensive grasp of the supported software and can investigate logs to solve software problems.

You can assign specialties to support engineers to increase the efficiency of this level (website issues, database issues, etc.). As a result, when L1 agents escalate a ticket that they are unable to address, they determine which specialty best matches the issue and assign it to a related L2 engineer.

Specifications of the software. It’s feasible to mix L1 and L2 in some circumstances (for example, when delivering specialist software for a small set of end users, such as chemical analysis software, when a large number of L1 requests is unlikely). This method will shorten the time it takes for a ticket to reach the appropriate agent and, as a result, minimize the time it takes to resolve a problem.

Level 3

L3 support includes conducting research and providing solutions for issues that need code updates, as well as making modest improvements to the supported product. What is the best way to determine this level? Agents must be able to comprehend software at the code level in order to conduct L3 tasks. As a result, the Level 3 support staff should include developers who can address issues at the product’s back end, ideally original developers.

Outsourcing this level of support is only feasible if you outsource your whole product development and then agree to have the vendor’s development team handle L3 support.

Level 4

It’s a level that includes escalating a problem to third-party software or hardware manufacturers. Platform-based solutions, for example, are supported (say, on Salesforce or SharePoint). Consider a new platform release that results in a problem that is reported to the support staff. It is classified as a Level 3 technical failure. Support engineers research the problem and discover that it is not related to the solution’s setups or modifications, thus they are unable to resolve it.

Rather, it’s due to a flaw in the platform’s first release. In this instance, L3 specialists can either report the issue to L4 engineers (platform provider representatives in charge of troubleshooting) or file a bug report on a platform provider’s user forum.