IT Support (e.g. – technical support, customer support, tech support) provides answers and solutions to customers regarding product and service-related technical issues and questions.
As supported by research, IT services are a significant factor for business development.
- 89% of customers who have a positive customer experience decide to purchase other products and services from that company. (Salesforce)
- Excellent customer service results in 93% of customers becoming repeat customers of the company. (HubSpot)
IT Support Channels
Channels that customers prefer are generally e-mails, phones, in-person, and chat.
Communication can be divided into nonverbal communication and verbal communication. Nonverbal communication includes facial expressions, clothing, posture, voice tone, and cadence during conversation which help to convey feelings and information. In-person and telephone IT support, which includes nonverbal communication, are easier to communicate than other channels.
IT support in-person or by phone is especially helpful for problems in mission-critical environments. Customers and IT support professionals can communicate efficiently and easily, and IT support professionals can receive the information they need to start troubleshooting. However, non-critical inquiries by phone interrupts troubleshooting for other critical inquiries.
The advantage of email and chat is that it’s easy to track IT support history, which can also be used as a knowledge base. However, nonverbal communication channels can be misunderstood. Customers may misunderstand messages from IT support. Customer trust can be affected by the misunderstanding for critical issues.
IT Support Levels
Many companies have a support level-based structure.
Tier 0 (or L0 or Level 0)
Using self-technical support services such as “Frequently Asked Questions”, manuals, wikis, tutorials, chatbots, and more, customers can solve problems and find answers to questions without needing to contact IT support.
Tier 1 (or L1 or Level 1)
This level involves collecting logs and information about problems and questions to start to analyze and answer general questions. Tier 1 support professionals escalate to Tier 2 if the troubleshooting for the problems requires a higher level of technical skills.
Tier 2 (or L2 or Level 2)
Tier 2 IT support professionals deal with issues escalated from Tier 1. They perform highly specialized log investigations and troubleshooting.
Tier 3 (or L3 or Level 3)
Tier 3 level IT support conducts further troubleshooting such as coding and reproducing the issue in test environments.
Tier 4 (or L4 or Level 4)
Generally, developer teams on the vendor side provide the tier 4 IT support, which provides solutions and information using internal information.
Business Impact by IT Support
User-friendliness of products and services is an important factor when customers make a purchase decision. Then the company can build more customer trust and increase the value of the products.
Apple is one of the most successful brands. They have gained tremendous numbers of customers by developing their products, by being customer-first and providing high-quality support. Customer-first is to develop business for customers’ needs. Apple has developed user-friendly products and support systems that respond quickly to problems. (TIME) A support system example is Apple Store, which allows customers to try products and get immediate answers to their questions. A great IT support system also differentiates a company from other competitive companies in an industry.
Many successful cases describe that IT support had a significant impact on business development.
IT Support Localization
IT support needs to be developed for global markets and for expanding businesses globally. Localization processes optimize IT support systems for each culture. These are examples of content that can be localized for IT support.
- IT support systems (Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, or dedicated systems)
- multilingual website
- manuals
- tutorials
- knowledge base
- frequently asked questions
- Wiki
- Chatbot