Tier Support: How to Organize your Customer Service Team
Successful support, technical or otherwise, thrives on consistency. Businesses that consistently have fast, accurate, and friendly support resources available will have higher customer satisfaction rates than those who are continuously slow to respond, provide inaccurate information, or appear apathetic.
But how do you provide fast, knowledgeable, and consistent support while keeping costs down? The answer is by incorporating a tiered support structure that includes different support tiers catering to different types of customers or customer issues.
Many companies have integrated tiered support as their standard system. Standardization decreases ambiguity for both the customer and employees. Without the need for stressful guesswork, your team can boost productivity and guarantee quality. Simply put, there’s little room for floundering when your agents know what to expect. Implementing tiered support can help create a streamlined process that gets customers in touch with the right agent, every time.
What is tiered support?
Tiered support refers to organizing a support center into different levels to most efficiently handle incoming support issues. With the right combination of staffing, automation, and systems at every level, filtering your support through different tiers proves useful for several reasons, as it:
- Strategically addresses customer needs.
- Empowers customers to be self-sufficient when possible.
- Quickly resolves repeat or small, easy-to-manage issues during the first interaction.
- Establishes a timeline and protocol for complex problems, optimizing KPIs.
- Improves employee training, upward mobility, and retention by providing clarity of standards.
- Allows opportunities for feedback and suggestions for continued development.
What are the levels of tier support?
Support Tier Customer Concern Appropriate Action Response Channel
Tier 0: Self-service portals and chatbots FAQs, product inquiries, basic questions If self-service is insufficient, handoff to tier 1 Automated suggestions, knowledge base, chatbot, or chat widget
Tier 1: Frontline support Common customer issues such as account problems and product usage questions Providing “how-to” support, collecting customer data, and escalating issue to tier 2 depending on the complexity of the issue The initial point of contact with the company, including phone, live chat, social support, and email, managed through ticketing software, and screen sharing with customers
Tier 2: Senior support staff, team leads Complex issues like billing and refunds, vendor questions, network problems, product/feature requests, etc Receiving customer context from tier 1 agents and troubleshooting by providing product knowledge. Escalating issues to tier 3 if too complex or require additional systems access Live chat, video calling, ticketing software, and account management system
Tier 3: Solution engineers and account managers Fixing or diagnosing bugs, high-level troubleshooting, security, request for product upgrades/feature, customizations, downtimes, usability problems, etc Building new solutions and workarounds, while being directly involved in maintaining the customer relationship. Logs new problems and the actions taken to evaluate the need for future upgrades Live chat, video call, ticketing software, account management, and in-person assistance
Let’s take a closer look at what each support tier entails:
Tier 0
The first tier of support that customers will interact with is self-service, referred to on the above chart as tier zero. The growing popularity of self-service portals in customer service can be huge for streamlining efficiency in your teams. Customers are resourceful, and if they can help themselves, they will.
Tier 1
Generally, your tier 1 team will often resolve most of your customers’ issues. It’s estimated that tier 1 support agents should be able to solve 45-65% of all issues, so it’s essential for them to have strong communication, troubleshooting, and customer service skills.
Tier 1 needs to gather as much information as possible from the customer. The data gathered could include anything from the error or warning message displayed on the screen, any logs files, screenshots, any data used, or the sequence of steps made by the end-user. Tier 1 reps should be able to clearly identify what the customer is trying to achieve to ensure that the correct steps are taken in later tiers if needed.
Tier 2
Tier 2 customer support deals with more advanced issues and is usually made up of experienced agents. They might troubleshoot more complex issues, have access to billing and refund platforms, and offer support to partners or other third parties.
Tier 3
Tier 3 is composed of support engineers and account managers who have access to the highest level of company/ product information. Tier 3 usually helps a small percentage of customers who are either high-value customers or customers experiencing very unusual technical issues. When a query reaches level 3 support, the technicians attempt to define the root of the problem by looking into code. After the issue has been found, the ticket may be transferred back to the lower level tiers, if necessary, or outsourced in tier four.
Tier 4
The fourth tier is often used for support outside of the company, depending on the need. This may be more common in companies dealing with more complex technological products.
How to implement a tiered support system
Many companies modify the tier support template to fit their needs, resources, and philosophies. Here are four popular ways to customize the tiers for speed and efficiency, as well as for improving employee satisfaction:
-
Enable collaboration between support tiers
Incorporating tier collaboration goes a long way in decreasing employee turn-over rates, especially amongst tier 1 agents. Cross-tier collaboration enables agents to learn from the resolution processes in other tiers of support and helps them get better at handling various types of customer issues.
-
Deploy a helpdesk to add a method to the madness
The right customer service software will help automatically route customer issues to the appropriate team or agent. This process betters the customer experience as customers are not put through a series of cold transfers between different agent tiers and ensures full employee engagement in finding a solution. Plus, in-app collaboration allows agents from tier 2 and tier 3 more opportunities not to run back and forth between different teams for resolutions— they can work together within the issue raised in the helpdesk
-
Establish a sense of accountability between support tiers
A request is never fulfilled until the customer gets a satisfying resolution. While tier 1 support may learn about handling complex issues from higher tiers, tier 3 and beyond can unearth revenue opportunities by identifying customer needs from tier 1 conversations. So, agents can periodically go through customer issues in the other support tiers and discuss alternative solutions or recommend process improvements. With an advanced customer service software like Freshdesk, agents can add themselves as ‘Watchers’ on tickets that weren’t assigned to them. As a Watcher, you’ll receive email notifications of all forthcoming conversations made on the ticket.
-
Set up time limits for query resolution
Referring to the time taken to resolve different types of customer issues can help you categorize your customer support team — the longer it will take to solve a problem, the more experienced the rep needs to be. So, you can set time limits on each type of issue instead of letting reps judge when to transfer to the next tier. For example, tier-one agents should be able to solve issues in less than 15 minutes, or the ticket should move to the next level. You can find realistic time limits by referring to your reports and categorizing them by different types of issues.
It’s best to automate the process of passing the ticket and escalating whenever needed. Freshdesk enables you to create workflow automations and SLA (Service Level Agreement) with time-based triggers to ensure that your support tiers are functioning smoothly and your customers are getting resolutions on time.
Once you’ve established a format, consider ways to support your team further to encourage them to continue creating positive customer experiences. Define top skills for support managers like goal setting, experience with change and conflict management, strong communication, and hiring experience. Also, make sure to create growth opportunities, incentivizing team members towards opportunities for upward mobility. Things like informal training, mentorships, and continued learning enable support reps to grow and evolve in their roles.
Is tiered support right for you?
Although tiered support is a good way to boost your support teams’ consistency, you should always evaluate your customer service setup before adapting the tier support model. For example, a software company’s tier methods may need more resources placed towards higher-tier technical support. In contrast, a retail company may survive with its attention solely focused on the first two tiers. To account for which system is the best fit for you, ask questions like: “Can tier 1 operate in-house, or does it need to be outsourced?” “What’s our customer query volume?” “Which teams can/should be added to tier 2 support?”
Establishing or adjusting your technical support team to effectively solve your needs can be overwhelming, especially as your company grows. Yet, knowing the proper way to organize your team will cut down on time and resources and increase the likelihood of customer retention while ensuring your ability to maintain quality of service.
For a tier support model to function successfully, you need to have the right support technology. A good customer service software will supplement your tiered support structure and help them operate without any hiccups. For instance, Freshdesk offers contextual in-app collaboration, flexible automations, and a seamless ticketing experience for agents, setting them up for success.
