What is an IT support service?
An IT support is above all a service center made up of qualified IT technicians and listening to users in order to respond to requests for incidents and / or use of IT tools such as messaging, the Internet, remote access …
IT support can also be an internal service of the company or outsourced to a service provider and specialized in the field.
The primary objective of IT support is to facilitate the daily life of a company in the handling and operation of its IT equipment. Support is available on a specific schedule based on business activity to resolve IT failures and allow maximum business continuity. A local IT support is more recommended. For example for companies working in Sacramento, hiring IT support Sacramento is a wise decision. There are always technical problems that need quick handling.
We can also call an IT support a hot line or an IT helpdesk.
How does an IT support service work?
Support
The first phase of IT support operation is called support. It consists first of all in defining the technical scope of the interventions entrusted to the support. Indeed, it is possible to ask support to limit its field of action to the IT park consisting only of computers or to extend it to the overall infrastructure. We will see that this perimeter also defines the support level.
Once the scope has been defined, the service provider providing support will deploy its tools to facilitate fault resolution: it will deploy a remote control tool on all workstations in order to be able to resolve a fault on a computer at distance. It will also deploy monitoring software to detect abnormal behavior on the network or on other critical equipment.
Finally, the support will constitute the technical documentation on the whole of the perimeter, namely, the information on the obsolescence of the stations, the updates, the duration of the licenses of the antivirus, etc.
The day-to-day operation of IT support
As soon as the scope is clearly defined and the tools are deployed, the current operating phase of the support can begin. The users have the possibility of contacting the support in an unlimited way and they have the choice for this between an online chat system (teams or slack), the telephone or a ticketing tool. The ticketing tool is very often preferred because it makes it possible to trace the exact time of the failure, the type and criticality of the failure as well as the resolution time.
Technical committees are regularly held between the customer and IT support in order to report on the quality of the service provided and the nature of faults reported frequently. This then allows a continuous improvement process to be put in place which aims to eliminate common failures.
Computer support
Depending on the nature of the business of the company, it may be useful or even necessary to set up an on-call duty for extended hours, or even on weekends. Indeed, some activities, especially industrial ones, operate in 3 * 8 and need constant IT support in order to guarantee business continuity.
These penalties must be specified in the contract so that the service provider can mobilize its teams during these hours.
