For any business organization, IT support or service desk is of utmost importance. Almost all business organizations are using technology to connect with customers. If any issue occurs within the technical infrastructure occurs, then the service availability of the firm can go downhill. Technical support is also provided to customers only after they report an IT issue.

Small businesses may have only one member in their tech support. On the other hand, large organizations have a dedicated IT support team to resolve the issues of their customers and employees. IT support can be provided in different ways based on their levels. Read on to know about the difference between tiers of IT support.

L0 Tier of Technical Support

Before we delve into L1, L2, and L3 tiers of technical support, one should know about the L0 tier of technical support. The L0 tier of technical support works as follows:

• In the L0 tier, users retrieve information to solve technical issues themselves. In the L0 tier, users retrieve information from web pages, FAQs, blogs, and online communities.
• Users take help from service catalogs of mobile applications to resolve a technical issue.
• There is no involvement of IT staff in the L0 tier as users fix technical issues themselves.
• Customer forums and online communities are used to solve IT issues without the help of company personals.
• L0 tier also boosts service reliability as customers can solve basic IT issues themselves. They will not migrate to other digital services if they can resolve an IT issue.
• Even though a customer does not interact with any company member, it is the responsibility of the company to maintain product/service information. Blogs, FAQs, common issues, and social media accounts must be managed by the company to provide L0 tier support to customers.
• In the L0 tier support, companies hire moderators that overlook customer forums on digital channels.

Since the number of customers searching for relevant information has increased, managing the L0 tier can be a hassle. Business organizations are using digital service desk AI software to maintain the L0 tier information. IT automation with AI can help in knowing about the common issues faced by the customers. Now, let us find out about the IT support tiers that involve company personals.

Understanding L1 Tier of Technical Support

Tier 1 of technical support involves company personals for solving IT issues. However, the technical experience required for providing L1 tier support is less than other tiers. Features of the L1 tier of technical support are listed below:

• It is the most basic form of the service desk in a firm responsible for maintaining service availability. L1 tier personals usually respond to chats, emails, and phone calls from customers and resolve their IT issues.
• Service desk requests are prioritized and fulfilled by L1 tier personals.
• If L1 tier personals cannot resolve an IT issue, they will forward it to higher tech-support personals.
• L1 tier personals usually follow scripts to solve low-level technical issues. Not enough technical training is required to resolve technical issues in the L1 tier.
• For each IT incident, L1 tier personals generate a unique ticket that helps other tech support personals in identifying it.

L1 tier personals are responsible for incident management and solving basic queries of customers. Since the number of IT incidents has increased due to complex software systems, L1 tier personals are finding it hard to provide customer support. Also, L1 tier personals are the first who listen to IT issues faced by the employees. If IT issues faced by the employees are not fixed quickly, service availability can decrease. Firms are reducing the load on L1 tier employees by installing AIOps based analytics platforms in their premises. The best AIOps platforms software in the market can help L1 tier personals to generate unique tickets for each IT incident.

Understanding L2 Tier of Technical Support

Tier 2 technical support personals need more experience than L1 personals. L2 tier of technical support is explained below:

• L2 technical support personals provide in-depth technical support to customers and employees.
• L2 tier personals escalate the IT issues that cannot be solved to L3 tier personals.
• It is not necessary that the engineers and designers who manufactured the product/service will only provide L2 tier support. However, the personals that provide L2 tier technical support should be highly skilled and familiar with the product/service issues.

Due to the increased complexity of IT incidents, L2 tier personals are using AIOps based analytics platforms for better results. With predictive analytics models of AIOps, incident management becomes easy.

Understanding L3 Tier of Technical Support

The features of L3 tier of technical support are listed below:

• The highest technical resources in an organization can be accessed by L3 tier personals.
• L3 tier personals also launch new features that fix common IT issues faced by customers and employees.
• L3 tier personals use AI automated root cause analysis solutions to fix issues faster. They get to the depth of an IT issue and try to make sure it never occurs again.
• New fixes that resolve bugs and IT issues are launched by L3 tier personals. The new fixes are then documented by L1 and L2 personals.
• L3 tier usually includes engineers, architects, developers, and other experienced IT professionals.

All the tiers of technical support can be enhanced via the best AIOps tools and products. The root cause of an IT incident can be identified quickly with AIOps based analytics platform. Many times, redundant incidents confuse technical support teams. A digital service desk AI software can help in prioritizing IT issues based on their impact on service reliability & availability. Mundane tasks like incident correlation, incident acknowledgment, and documentation can be automated with AIOps. It can also help in providing technical support to employees and customers in the current scenario of remote work.

In a Nutshell

Among all the business organizations that use AI, around 40% use it for providing better customer support services. You can also enhance several tiers of customer support via AIOps based analytics platforms. Start enhancing different tiers of technical support now!