Hey all, in my company we've been having a lot of trouble with our first-line support team and I wanted to get some ideas how it works in other companies.
To give some context, I work in a Customer Team (L2-L3 Support) for a MSP, previously I belonged to the Internal Operations Team and they had a very negative view on the first-line team, with opinions like:
- we don't need them
- they lack knowledge
- management can't create a good first-line team because they don't want to invest
But I didn't interact a lot with them before, but now, I have to interact with them on a daily basis, and I see some things that have started to make me worried about the team:
- They ignore KB's
- They say that they don't have access to certain servers, or that they don't find the correct credentials and just pass the ticket for us to solve
- They have people that lack knowledge in some basic support, I have had tickets passed on with notes like "I don't know how to use Linux"
From my point of view and the team I belong now, we all think that management didn't really verify the required knowledge for some members of that team, but they really have a few that are trying really hard to improve their skills.
We have started to try to help them, so that our job can also become easier:
- Improve the language in legacy KB's
- Simplify the process in the monitoring platform with more directions
- Automating some processes so that the first-line can execute fixes without having the required knowledge on the backend
- Picking the best members of their team and promoting them to our team
That team also has some problems that I fully recognize:
- Shit pay
- Bad leadership, that team has had 6 different Team Leaders in a short time (I have been here for only 2 years)
- Lacking interview and requirements for the position
Sorry for the long text, would love to have some feedback from your sides, or is this normal in a lot of companies?
In a lot of companies, the front line support personnel are one step up from a chat bot. They are there to either look up a pre-formed answer for a common problem, or route the caller to a specialist who can help them. The jobs are usually low pay, and outsourced, so the employees don’t really have a stake in the success of the company.
Sometimes these jobs can be an entry level into applying for a position with the company. Employees who realize this often try to go a bit further in their efforts.
I really wished they could be a bit better than a simple human "chat bot".
I try sometimes to teach them what I can, they're all in house and local.
I would hope the company could see them as a "first step" to the Customer Support.
Maybe I'm just trying to make them something they're not.
You also have to think about what metrics your company is using for them. A lot of times for front line phone support it’s length of call. They’re not going to dig in they’re going to push it to the first relevant department they can.