With entry level to experienced technician services ranging from $18-30.00/hr, we all have a pretty good idea of how much IT services can cost your company. That isn’t including the work stations, and costs to keep them running. With all this in mind, along with upcoming holidays, you know you can’t afford to waste time, which is why we here at Fortech Solutions thought it would be a good idea to offer you a few tips to cut your support costs.

Specificity – Nail it down

What wastes a lot of time in initial support interactions is the initial back and forth between customers having support issues and the help desk representative they’re working with. This time is money that you’ll never get back so save yourself some by teaching your customers to be as specific as they can when it comes to describing the problem they’re having. If they can’t do that or recreate the issue it’s not an issue and everyone can move on with their day

FAQ List

We’ve all seen this list of frequently asked questions. If your company doesn’t have one, have your support team jot down a list of the most common problems and issues that your customers are bringing to the table. Then feature the FAQ list by having a tab for it on your homepage AND on the support page near the button used to open a support ticket and make it a prerequisite to review the list before they can submit a support ticket. This saves customers and support a lot of time and frustration.

Escalation Rules

In most support teams there are three tiers; tier 1, is for the most basic technical support, tier 2 is considered the more experienced technician, while tier 3 is considered the most and usually includes some or all of the engineering team. The experience in Tiers 2 & 3 cost a lot more than tier 1 so have a clearly defined set of escalation rules for when issues need to be handed off to the next level. In other words, don’t have your tier 3 engineers resolving tier 1, or 2 issues. Keeping this in mind when trying to resolve issues is a surefire way to save your company money.

Conclusion

Just a few basic tips to keep things running smooth, in the most cost-effective way possible; make sure every support request is as specific as it possibly can be, that your customers have a place to go for the most frequently asked questions (FAQ) and know where that is, and to finally have a clearly defined set of escalation rules to go by so you know exactly where to direct every support request. That’s all we have for now. Please feel free to leave anything we missed in the comment box below.