When you run into a tech problem, you generally contact your tech support team. Whether the problem is a user error, a bug, or a technical issue, it does not matter. You just want it solved to continue with your job. If you do not have a tech support team in place, you should know that it is crucial for an improved user experience.

What is tech support?

Tech support is a method of client communication that product-centric companies use to help their users get the most out of their products. Typically, this is done through live chat, email, or phone. This aims to solve technical problems like installation issues, login errors, and other technical difficulties that can have a negative impact on the user experience.

5 levels of tech support

A well-structured tech support system will be split into 5 distinct levels. These 5 levels include:

1. Pre-support

Today, your users will just Google if they have any queries. This means that most of your customers will be browsing the web looking for answers before they get in touch with you. For every good review, there could be countless customers complaining who have not had their problems solved and are all too keen to share their experience about it online. It is significant to perceive online forums, social media, and website comments as your first line of defence.

2. Self-service

The next level in tech support is managed through self-help wikis and FAQs. For many, this is a quick and easy alternative to contacting a help desk and waiting for a response by email. Having a self-service level in place resolves the most common queries and frees up first line support for more in-depth and complex questions.

3. First line of support

Unfortunately, FAQs and knowledge bases cannot answer everything. Occasionally, your users need to talk with a human. First-line support focuses on the most common queries. Tech support employees at this level have a basic to a general understanding of the product or service. The goal for this group is to handle 70-80% of the user problems before finding it necessary to escalate the issue to a higher level. The more difficult the issues become, the more likely they will want to talk with an online tech support manager.

4. Second line of support

The difficulty of tech support calls is increasing since clienteles have become more technically sophisticated and can resolve simpler problems on their own. This means that the 25-30% of tech support queries that could not be handled in first-line support, end up here in the second line and are far more complicated. It needs staff with in-depth knowledge of the product to handle these support requests, provide technical guidance, and the ability to talk to users over the phone to help them find a solution.

5. Third line of support

This is the high point of tech support. Third-line support deals with outlier cases that other levels could not handle. This means that third-line tech support is likely to be managed by a designated superuser, or even someone from your R&D department. On the whole, by the time a user issue gets to the third level of tech support, it has become so complex that it likely involves custom work to solve it.

Conclusion

Tech support is a critical component of the overall user experience. With customers becoming more tech-savvy, it is important you get your tech support right. QuickTech provides onsite IT support services along with small business IT support which will improve your user experience. Just call us on  1300 016 017.