More often than you know, people experience glitches and difficulties while using technological products or services and don’t know how to resolve these issues.
Thankfully, most technological service or product providers now have a standby support team to help their customers with any problems they may be facing. This team is commonly referred to as “tech support.
Although most companies’ tech support teams can handle and provide you with solutions to your problems, they may not treat your problems with the urgency you need them to. So, as a serious business about providing customers with the best services, you may need a private team dedicated to solving all your company’s technical problems. If you can’t afford an in-house team, you should consider working with a managed IT services company. See Computers Made Easy Inc. here for more details about this.
What Is Technical Support?
Technical support is a range of services companies provide to their users or customers for computer-related devices such as mobile phones, printers, software, and electronic, electro-mechanical, and mechanical products.
This is usually provided as advice on solving problems, not training on how to use the product. That means it would only be provided to those who ask for it, not to all customers at a time. Most of the time, this service is available 24 hours a day for customers to ask questions and for urgent services.
It’s also a form of client communication that product-focused companies use to assist their users in experiencing the best out of their products.
How Do You Get Technical Support?
Technical support can be either virtual or traditional. Traditional technical support is when the consumer has to go to the service provider’s physical office to be attended to. Technical support is given remotely, and you can just be attended to from home.
Based on the varying needs of users, tech support services can be provided through emails, live chat support, knowledge bases, and on the phone.
Levels of Technical Support
Technical support is often divided into levels or tiers to serve customers better. Most of the time, the number of levels or tiers of the technical support group is dependent on the company, its needs, and how it aims to serve the users efficiently.
You’ll usually see five levels of tech support for a well-organized or structured company. These five levels are pre-support, self-service, first-line support, second-line support, and, in emergencies, third-line support.
Pre-Support
Before the internet came, if anything went wrong with your product, you’d need to ask around to see if anyone had any experience using the product. However, you could “google it in this day and time.”
At this pre-support level, customers browse the internet, searching for answers before contacting the company. Via the internet, other users could offer solutions to the problem, give better ways to use the product effectively, and, if it’s troubleshooting problems, could help their fellow users with that.
Self-service
In self-service, the client can solve the problem by themselves. This could be done by reading manuals offered by the company and checking the company’s website for support web pages that have how-to guides, product descriptions, and FAQs.
If the user can not seem to get the answers, the user can resort to emails, social media accounts, or any other medium of communication.
First-line support
It’s assumed that the tech support rep has a reasonable amount of information about the company to be able to answer the user’s questions. So when the first two methods fail, people reach out to them.
Second-Line Support
Second-line support handles complex issues, especially with users that are tech-smart. About 30% of problems that cannot be handled in first-line contact are sent here. Staff with in-depth knowledge of the product should handle these queries or questions and give additional technical guidance. The staff should also be able to talk to the user over the phone and help with finding a solution. Still, some requests made here require professional expertise.
Third-Line Support
This is the highest point of technical support for the majority of consumers. Only professionals and the best customer service support team are allowed to handle issues at this stage. The creator of the product may be directly involved at this stage.
At this stage, the customer has access to the highest tech resources.
Third-line support seeks to solve overstayed cases passed down from pre-support and second-line support.
Requirements of a Good Tech support Structure
A good technical support structure should have the following qualities:
- excellent communication skills.
- Availability and accessibility.
- Pay attention to the details.
- Have good problem-solving skills.
- Have a team of professionals and experts representing their services.