Levels of IT Support Explained: Demystifying the Escalation Process

Levels of IT Support Explained: Demystifying the Escalation Process 

Many of our customers will have experienced it “we are escalating this ticket to our second line team,” but what does that mean? Does it mean that the first line team member does not have the right knowledge? Does it mean that they do not have the time? These are all legitimate questions.

Understanding the nuances of support levels can significantly enhance your experience as a customer. As your managed service provider, we are committed to offering not just solutions, but also clarity on how we resolve your issues efficiently and effectively.

Our support structure is tiered into three distinct levels: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line support, there are also project and implementation teams, each with its own unique skill set, roles, and escalation processes. This structure ensures that our customers tickets are addressed by those with the most suitable expertise, guaranteeing timely and effective resolutions by people who are trained, and in many cases certified, in those solutions. 

First Line Support: Your Initial Point of Contact
The journey of issue resolution traditionally begins at the first line of support. This is a team of highly skilled professionals you're likely to interact with first, tasked with addressing common problems and queries. An example of these could be Desktop issues, Microsoft 365 issues, Email Issues, Printer Problems, User Access Levels, and much more. Their expertise lies in diagnosing and resolving these commonplace issues, providing immediate solutions for tickets raised. It's not just about troubleshooting; first line support also plays a crucial role in documentation, ensuring that every interaction and solution is recorded for future reference. However, when a problem requires a deeper level of technical insight into particular product sets, the ticket is escalated to the second- or third-line support, and it is important that our First Line Team understand where those skills are so that the ticket can be addressed accordingly.  

Does this mean that First Line Support do not have the right knowledge?
Not necessarily, it could mean that they are in the process of improving training in these areas, it could also mean that they could resolve it, but it would take longer than someone more skilled as they would require referencing training materials and much more. The reason it is escalated is so that the ticket can be resolved in a timely manner by someone who already has that knowledge. By doing this, 1st Line Support can see notes and be trained on the resolutions so that when these problems present themselves in the future, they may have the skills to resolve them at the 1st Line level. 

Second Line Support: The Technical Backbone
Second line support specialists are your technical problem-solvers. Our Second-line has been with the team longer, has a deeper understanding of IT systems, solutions, cyber security, and our customers businesses, and tackles more complex issues that surpass the scope of the first line.

The Second Line Team is pivotal in maintaining the integrity of IT infrastructure, involving detailed diagnostics, system repairs, sophisticated troubleshooting, preventative actions, and much more. It's crucial to understand that escalation to the second line isn't a matter of knowledge deficiency, but of the need for a specialised skill set or even certifications in software suits or solutions that first line engineers may not yet have. Additionally, second line engineers may also operate in lower-level support roles to streamline ticket allocation and resolution to ensure that each concern is addressed efficiently and effectively. 

Third Line Support: Expertise for Critical and Specialised Issues
At the pinnacle of our support structure is the third line support team, consisting of experts and specialists with highly specialised knowledge and certifications in specific areas such as; network infrastructure, software, and cyber security solutions. These are the individuals called upon for the most complex and critical issues, often involving system development and configuration, in-depth analysis, and the deployment of advanced and custom solutions. Their work is crucial in ensuring the long-term stability and security of our customers IT systems. Similar to second line support, third line professionals might also engage in second- or first-tier support activities, ensuring a cohesive and integrated approach to ticket resolution across all levels. 

The Escalation Process
Our escalation process is designed to ensure that tickets are actioned and addressed by the appropriate level of expertise in a timely manner. It's a misconception that tickets are escalated due to a lack of knowledge at lower levels. In reality, escalation is based on the specific skill set or certification required, experience with a particular set of tools or systems, or the urgency of the issue. This process ensures that your concerns are not just resolved, but done so with the utmost efficiency and effectiveness, leveraging the specialised skills of our diverse team, and ensuring that resolution times are kept to a minimum. 

Line Zero: The New Automated Resolution Platform
At TwentyFour IT, we are constantly pushing ourselves to do better for our customers, putting solutions and processes in place to ensure that we can resolve their issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is where our new “Line Zero” set of tools comes in, Line Zero will be able to deal with common daily and repetitive tasks quickly and efficiently. Look out for more information on our new Line Zero coming very soon. 

Meet Neo: Your Always on IT Support Technician
In addition to our Line Zero platform, we have also begun to introduce “Neo” to our customers. Neo is like your own personal IT Support Bot who is always available right inside Microsoft Teams. You can ask Neo questions, it can automatically resolve tickets, it can guide you through resolution steps, and if it cannot help directly, it will log a ticket for you or forward you on to an available support engineer directly inside Microsoft Teams. Neo can even reference your own internal system documents so that you can train it on common issues and can reference past tickets, meaning that like our support engineers Neo is always learning. 

Note: Neo is slowly starting to roll out to all our customer bases after undergoing a 4-month test with over 3,000 users. 

Our Commitment to Our Customers & Employees
The tiered support structure is at the heart of our commitment to providing our customers with leading IT and Cyber Security services. Understanding the roles and expertise of each support level allows us to cater to our customers' needs effectively, ensuring that your issues, whether they are simple queries or complex technical challenges, are addressed quickly and effectively by the right people.

By implementing new solutions such as, AI and Machine Learning Driven, Line Zero and Neo, we can focus on the tickets that require the most attention without taking up time on common or repetitive issues. This also provides us with the ability to invest more into employee training and upskills. Each of our employees are provided half a day a week to commit to training, learning new skills, products, or services, or improving their existing skills. Our longest serving employee joined as an apprentice more than 10 years ago and is now our Senior Implementation Engineer, dealing with 3rd Line Support and Project Implementation and Configuration.

This investment in technologies and solutions to help our customers, means that we can invest in training for our employees to continue our growth, and it means that our First-Line engineers of today, are our Third-Line Engineers of tomorrow.