Tier Support Services
Tiered support provides a model for providing high-availability service products in a networked environment. In the tiered support model, organizational functions are placed in an escalation hierarchy with clear lines of demarcation between functions to ensure that responsibilities and duties are clearly defined.
The following descriptions show the five levels in the tiered support model, describe the escalation strategy for each level, and give a short description of the skills, titles, and job descriptions for people in each role. In general, as we move up the escalation hierarchy, the skills and knowledge required to do the job successfully become more specialized.
Tier 1: Customer support/Help desk (Customer Support Representative).
This group is the first line of support and is generally receiving customers calls first. They perform triage, solving straightforward problems themselves (possibly using some kind of knowledge management tool) and pass the rest onto Tier 2. In some rare cases, they may escalate directly to Tier 3. Workers in this group are marginally skilled with little technical training. This support level is often outsourced because the skills necessary to do the job effectively are not as directly tied to the specific products and services being offered as they are for the other tiers.
Tier 2: Technical support (Technical Support Engineer).
This group handles escalations from Tier 1 and escalates to either Tier 3 or 4. TSEs try to find the solution to a customer’s problem either on their own or using other resources at their disposal. For example, they typically have direct lines into Tiers 3, 4 and 5 and a technical understanding of the products. Technical support personnel have beginning level technical skills and often move to other technical positions in tiers 3, 4, or 5 as their skills develop.
Tier 3: System/Network Administration (System Administrator, Network Administrator).
System administration in Tier 3 handles escalations from Tier 2 and escalates to Tier 4. Tier 3 personnel focus on the infrastructure that HA services rely on to function properly. The NOC (see discussion below) is the primary tool that network and server engineers use to monitor system performance.
Tier 4: Product Operations Engineering (Product Operations Engineer).
Product operations engineers handle escalations from Tier 2 and Tier 3 and escalate to Tier 5. The product operations group is made up of seasoned, technically skilled engineers who focus on the operation of individual products. Usually, their functional specialty is systems engineering and they are probably exeperienced employees who have worked for a time in Tier 3. They may have other functional specialties, such as database administration or network engineering, depending on the product they support.
The focus of a ProdOps engineer is different from Tier 3 where the focus is on infrastructure; the product operations engineer is directly responsible for the availibility of their product. The ProdOps Engineers work closely with Tier 2 and 3 personnel to ensure they are well trained and can answer as many questions and solve as many problems as possible. The ProdOps engineers work closely with Tier 5 to ensure that products are designed and built so that they can be monitored effectively and that there are workable strategies for scaling and maintaining the product. Product reliability and availability is their primary concern. ProdOps engineers monitor and control rollout of new production code coordinating the efforts of the NOC, Software Quality Assurance, and Engineering.
Tier 5: Engineering (Software or Systems Engineer).
Engineering is in charge building and maintaining products. They handle escalations from Tiers 2 and 4. Engineering is in charge of the bug tracking process and uses it as a means for monitoring the health of the products they have built and are maintaining. They do not set priorities for bug fixes, however. That is done by a group with representatives from Product Management, Technical Support, Software Quality Assurance, Product Operations, and Engineering (see the section on Teams below).
For more information on our multi tiered support services contact one our our account executives at (858)384-0989 or send us a quick contact form.
