Customer service tiers

Successful support—technical or otherwise—thrives on consistency. Businesses that consistently have fast, accurate, and friendly support resources will have higher customer satisfaction rates than those 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 solution is to incorporate a tiered support structure with multiple 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 handle incoming support issues efficiently. With the right combination of staffing, automation, and systems at every level, filtering your support through different tiers proves helpful for several reasons:

• Strategically addresses customer needs.

• Empower customers to be self-sufficient when possible.

• Quickly resolves repeat or minor, 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 is a tiered support system?

A tiered customer support system is a hierarchical structure used by organizations to manage and resolve customer or technical support issues efficiently. Typically, it consists of multiple tiers, each staffed by personnel with relevant expertise and varying levels of responsibility. The tiers are organized in a way that allows simple issues to be resolved quickly at the lower levels, while more complex or specialized problems are escalated to higher tiers for resolution.

What are the benefits of a tiered support system?

Within modern support frameworks, help desk tiered systems offer a structured approach to issue resolution. By leveraging a hierarchical model of expertise, these systems ensure efficient allocation of resources, enabling timely problem-solving. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of a tiered support system:

More efficient customer service

Tiered support systems enhance efficiency by streamlining customer service operations. By categorizing and prioritizing support requests based on complexity, these systems ensure that frontline agents swiftly address simple inquiries, freeing up higher-tier resources to focus on more challenging issues. This segmentation of tasks optimizes resource allocation, reduces resolution times, and ultimately enhances the overall customer experience.

Outlines daily operations

By delineating responsibilities across different tiers of expertise, tiered support systems establish structured workflows that guide support agents in their daily tasks. This clarity helps organize workload distribution, set performance expectations, and ensure each tier focuses on its designated scope of support. Additionally, it provides a framework for escalation procedures and collaboration between tiers that makes daily operations more efficient and coordinated, resulting in smoother resolution processes and improved customer satisfaction.

Cost effective

Tiered support systems categorize support inquiries based on complexity, enabling the efficient allocation of resources and ensuring that less expensive frontline agents handle routine issues while more costly specialized personnel are reserved for complex problems. This allocation optimizes staffing levels and minimizes the need for highly skilled personnel to handle every support request, thus reducing overall labor costs. These systems also contribute to cost-effectiveness and ROI in supporting infrastructure through improving productivity by streamlining workflows and minimizing downtime.

Scalable to business needs

As organizations grow or experience fluctuations in demand, tiered systems offer flexibility by adding or adjusting support tiers. This scalability ensures that support resources can be efficiently scaled up or down as needed, optimizing operational costs while maintaining service quality. Whether facing sudden spikes in support requests or gradual expansion, tiered support systems provide the adaptability necessary to align support infrastructure with business growth.

Establishes consistency

By defining clear procedures, protocols, and escalation paths, tiered support systems enable support teams to adhere to standardized practices, regardless of the issue's complexity. This consistency fosters a sense of reliability and trust among customers, who can expect a consistent level of service quality regardless of which tier handles their requests. Additionally, by promoting consistency in problem-solving approaches and service delivery, tiered support systems contribute to improved efficiency, reduced error rates, and enhanced overall customer satisfaction.

What are the challenges of tiered support systems?

Although tiered support systems can be highly beneficial, they can also come with challenges that must be addressed, such as:

Potential communication gaps

Miscommunication or inadequate documentation during handoffs between tiers can lead to delays, misunderstandings, and even errors in issue resolution. Differing levels of technical knowledge among support staff may also hinder effective communication, resulting in incomplete or inaccurate information being passed along. Addressing these communication gaps requires robust coordination mechanisms, clear documentation protocols, and ongoing training to ensure seamless information flow and collaboration across all tiers of support.

Training complexity

Providing comprehensive training programs that cater to the varying needs of frontline agents, specialized technicians, and senior support personnel can be demanding and time-consuming. Balancing the depth of technical knowledge with practical troubleshooting skills while keeping pace with evolving technologies further complicates training efforts. Addressing this challenge necessitates tailored training approaches, robust knowledge management systems, and ongoing professional development initiatives to equip support staff at all tiers with the skills and expertise to address customer needs effectively.

Resource allocation

Determining the optimal staffing levels for each tier, particularly during peak periods or when facing unexpected spikes in support requests, can be complex. Inadequate allocation of resources to lower tiers may lead to increased wait times, while overstaffing higher tiers can result in underutilization of resources and inflated operational costs. Aligning resource allocation with the evolving needs of the business and ensuring scalability to accommodate growth further complicates this. Addressing these resource allocation challenges requires careful monitoring of support metrics, predictive analysis of support trends, and agile workforce management strategies.

What are the levels of tier support?

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 they need 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 log files, screenshots, any data used, or the sequence of steps made by the end user. Tier 1 reps should be able to 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 comprises support engineers and account managers with access to the highest level of company and 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 the code. After the issue has been found, the ticket may be transferred back to the lower level tiers, if necessary, or outsourced to 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 and improve employee satisfaction:

• Enable collaboration between support tiers.

Incorporating tier collaboration goes a long way in decreasing employee turnover 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 ensure 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 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 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 related to the ticket. 

• Set up time limits for query resolution 

Analyzing the time taken to resolve different 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. 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 issues.

It’s best to automate passing tickets and escalating whenever needed. Freshdesk enables you to create workflow automation and SLA (Service Level Agreement) with time-based triggers to ensure that your support tiers function smoothly and your customers get resolutions on time.

Once you’ve established a format, 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. Make sure to create growth opportunities that incentivize team members toward opportunities for upward mobility. 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 for higher-tier technical support. In contrast, a retail company may survive with its attention solely focused on the first two tiers. To determine which system best fits 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. Good customer service software will supplement your tiered support structure and help them operate without hiccups. For instance, Freshdesk offers contextual in-app collaboration, flexible automation, and a seamless ticketing experience for agents, setting them up for success.