What Is IT Support? Tech Support, Service & Help Desk Guide

What Is IT Support?

IT support is technical assistance for users or organizations experiencing hardware, software, access, or device issues. It can also be known as tech support, technical assistance, help desk, customer support, or service desk.

IT support is imperative to today's organizations, as it enables technicians to service large ecosystems of technologies and devices. The software and hardware used by a modern organization are often dispersed across the globe, as many workforces are globally distributed and work-from-anywhere. Remote IT support, in particular, enables teams to maintain remote endpoints (servers, desktops, mobile devices, IoT, OT, etc.).

Secure IT support is particularly important, as a tech support agent will often require sensitive access to the user’s (or organization’s) network or device. This process must be protected by privileged access controls, password management, remote access security, session management, etc.

This blog post will provide an overview of IT support, including what it can look like in various organizations, what different tiers of IT support offer, essential tools for IT teams, and more.

Types of Technical Support Services

Technical support services usually fall into three models: in house tech support, outsourced technical support, and professional or customer support services.

In-house tech support

In-house tech support refers to an organization maintaining its own team to resolve technical issues from daily business operations. This can involve helping employees resolve technical problems, maintaining backups and security infrastructures, or helping a workforce to connect remotely. Most often, organizations will have an in-house tech team to support the development of a product, the implementation and maintenance of customized internal systems, or the organization’s handling of sensitive data that can’t be shared with third parties.

Outsourced technical support

Outsourced technical support means hiring a third party company, such as a managed services provider, to meet an organization’s support requirements. This can be done at varying levels, including:

Break-fix support: the outsourced company remotely fixes issues with your computers or network as they arise

Proactive support: the outsourced IT team is monitoring your hardware and software to prevent system outages in your network

Fully managed support: all IT support and maintenance needs are outsourced to your provider

Most often, organizations outsource their tech support to offer a comprehensive level of support while cutting costs. Outsourced support also enables them to leverage third-party IT support certifications, free up their resources to focus on the business’s key objectives, and, in many cases, provides access to 24/7 support.

Professional and customer support services

Professional services (pro services), otherwise known as customer service, is support that is offered by an organization in service of the technological products or services they provide to clients. This type of support typically offers a combination of technical assistance and practical customer service.

Pro services are largely designed to help ensure clients achieve a positive experience with the organization. It often forms an important part of a company’s customer service philosophy. Organizations typically offer professional services when they provide products or services that require technically specialized or skilled maintenance. However, support-as-a-service has also become an important competitive driver.

How Modern Tech Support Works

Modern tech support varies by organization size, industry, workforce model, and technology environment. Small companies may only require a small, internal IT team, or even just one IT generalist on staff. However, small companies increasingly rely on external support for applications or cloud services. Larger organizations, or companies requiring tech-support-as-a-service, may have multiple departments with numerous workers dedicated to their various IT needs.

Tech support can be delivered remotely by phone, email, live chat, video, chatbots, online tutorials, and even via software that enables an IT tech to remotely connect to and control your device.

What Is Remote IT Support?

Remote IT support allows a technician to access and troubleshoot a device without being physically present. These remote support sessions can occur attended by the device user or as an unattended remote session.

Unattended support is helpful when maintenance must be performed on devices, applications, and systems without a human operator present on the support target. In these cases, a certified IT specialist can remotely gain unattended access to the piece of equipment or machinery, troubleshoot, and even resolve the issue without requiring a technician on-site or an end user on the device.

Because unattended access typically takes the form of privileged access across sensitive system assets—sometimes en masse—it’s particularly important to have strong privileged access security controls in place. These PAM controls should include enforcing least privilege. Additionally, layering on session monitoring will provide a clean audit trail of everything that occurred during a support session.

What Does IT Support Do?

IT support teams help users resolve technology issues, maintain systems, secure access, and keep business tools available. This support is typically required when a software or technical issue occurs, along with a large scope of other use cases. Common tasks IT support may handle include:

Troubleshooting hardware, software, server maintenance, and other tech issues
Securing the environment from viruses, malware, and security breaches
Managing data backups
Responding to password recovery and access issues
Enabling remote or hybrid environments
Monitoring the environment, performing health checks, and reporting information

Let’s break down each of these common tasks:

1. Troubleshooting hardware, software and server issues

Technical support teams maintain the hardware, software, servers, and devices employees use each day. Tech support teams also ensure that servers remain operational and properly maintained. They also ensure that any endpoints and applications are operating properly to avoid interference with efficiency or uptime.

This support can include troubleshooting and mitigating / resolving issues such as computers shutting down unexpectedly or overheating, slow computer speeds, software faults, printer and other device connection issues, network and internet connection issues, etc. They may also maintain hardware and install updates and security patches to desktops, as well as updates to modems and routers.

2. Securing the environment from viruses, malware, and security breaches

Support teams help reduce cyber risk by applying security controls, monitoring access, and responding quickly when issues appear. Such support activities include:

Performing network monitoring and security: Controlling access to a business’s network by issuing and removing authorization as needed, building firewalls, installing antivirus software, installing VPNs, updating security patches, and performing regular network checkups.

Educating the workforce: Implementing email and download policies and protocols, informing the workforce about those new protocols, and initiating tests and fail-safes to ensure compliance and reduce the risk of breaches.

3. Managing data backups

Your service desk may manage the information backup services that protect your business in the event of a breach, power outage, or system failure. They may manually or automatically run file, server, and desktop backups. They will also test backup sets to make sure the information can be recovered in its entirety. This protects against information loss and ensures data security. For instance, in the event of a breach, a secure backup can help jumpstart operations. Data backups can be managed in:

Cloud environments
On-premises servers
Off-premises servers
Hybrid/combination

4. Responding to password recovery and access issues

Password and access-related issues can impact internal- or external-facing IT customers. Let’s face it, everyone has a lot of passwords to keep up with. A help desk technician can help when an employee can’t get logged into their PC, email account, etc. They can reinstate user rights or reset your password for you if the problem was as straightforward as a forgotten password. If there is something more complex going on, they can investigate and provide a solution.

Additionally, if a third-party organization needs to gain access to any part of the network (i.e., for repairs), or if an employee requires temporary access to restricted information for the completion of a project, the IT support team may be responsible for enabling authorization for the duration of time access is required. Remote vendor access should always adhere to a just-in-time access model. Access should be finite and revoked immediately when the work is completed, or after a pre-defined amount of time has expired.

5. Enabling remote and hybrid work

Remote and hybrid work depend on support teams to connect employees, systems, data, and communication tools across distributed environments. In addition to enabling operations, IT teams are also critical in ensuring that the means of communication and connectivity remain secure so that, as a company’s network and infrastructure expand to accommodate its remote components, the attack surface is kept in check.

6. Monitoring health checks, and reporting information

IT services are also critical in monitoring your network, performing health checks, keeping track of who has access to business information, troubleshooting for signs of issues, and tracking updates to systems and security. They can also generate reports to assist in decision-making and auditing.

Sample Secure Remote Access Architecture Graph

Technical Support Tiers by Level

Technical support tiers usually range from Level 0 self help to Level 4 outside support from vendors or partners. Level 0 represents self-help IT support, level 1 is basic service desk support, level 2 is more specialized support, level 3 is the highest possible support offered in-house, and level 4 is outside support offered by preferred vendors / partners. Here is a deeper dive into the different tech support levels and types of support you can expect to receive from each.

Level 0 - Self-help

Level 0 support allows users to find answers without direct help from an IT professional. This involves running search queries, pulling information from websites, FAQs, technical manuals, blog posts, app pages, service catalogs, and knowledge base articles, as well as interacting with chatbots.

Level 1 – Help Desk and Service Desk Support

Level 1 support is the first line of help desk and service desk support for basic issues, known problems, and service requests. Users interact through the phone or web (sometimes chat only) with an IT professional and then receive support for basic issues, known problems, and service requests. Your first-line support provider should have a broad range of general knowledge. This will allow them to quickly resolve most basic user problems so the user can get back up and running with minimal downtime. The service desk technician may use remote support technology to take remote control of your computer at this stage.

Level 2 – Technical Support

Level 2 technical support handles issues requiring deeper product, service, or system expertise. They are most likely to be Second-Line Support Engineers, Customer Support Technicians, and Desktop Support Analysts. Typically, the incidents addressed at this level require more technical expertise. Having the right IT support certifications in this scenario is a must. Here, your technical support personnel will assess the issue and provide a solution. This process may entail multiple conversations between the technical IT support technician and the client. IT services may also need to take remote access control to fix the problem.

Level 3 – Expert Product and Service Support

Level 3 support brings in the highest technical resources available inside the organization for incident resolution. These support staff are the most highly skilled product and service specialists, including Network Specialists, Server Engineers, Third-Line Support Engineers, and the engineers, programmers, and even chief architects who created the product or service. They will attempt to duplicate the problem to define the root cause and issue a new fix. Once the fix is issued, it will be documented for future use by levels 1 and 2 customer support technicians.

Level 4 – Outside Support

Level 4 support involves outside vendors or partners who handle systems, tools, or services the internal team does not directly support. This might include printer support, vendor software support, machine maintenance, depot support, etc.

For Levels 1-4 (even with external technicians), session sharing commonly occurs. We’ve all experienced this in one form or another, most often when a support technician puts you on hold to ask a question. With modern support tools, other technicians (be they up or down the support chain) can be consulted in real time. This can greatly improve the customer experience and positively affect service desk metrics, such as time-to-resolution.

How Does Service Desk Support Typically Work?

Service desk support usually follows one of two models: tiered technical support or swarming support.

Tiered support uses the IT support levels, mentioned above, as its organizational model. A tech issue is introduced at an early level and then is escalated to higher levels of support as required. For instance, if the issue can’t be resolved quickly and efficiently by the Level 1 service provider, the issue will be recorded and escalated to Level 2.

Swarming support, on the other hand, allows one service desk technician to work on a problem from start to finish. Rather than escalating the issue to a higher tier of support, the technician will seek the proper resources needed to resolve the issue. The technician typically has to "swarm" with other peers until enough information and resources are available to resolve the issue.

Help Desk vs. Service Desk vs. Technical Support

A help desk, service desk, and technical support function can overlap, but each serves a different purpose. Respectively, each will have its own complement of help desk certifications, service desk certifications, or technical support certifications to distinguish them, but here are some other key distinctions that set them apart.

What is a Help Desk?

A help desk provides fast support for basic technical problems and common user requests. These queries and requests tend to fall into the tier 1 level of support. The support agent will prioritize creating a positive user experience with quick response times, flexible contact options, and fast resolution times. The types of issues a help desk is most equipped to support include password issues, software and application support, and server backups. Most of these issues can be resolved over the phone or via a remote connection to the user’s device.

What is a Service Desk?

A service desk manages IT incidents and service requests with a broader service management focus than a help desk. It has its origins in the concept of managing IT as a service. Whereas the help desk is tactical and focused on fixing what is broken, a service desk is more strategic. It manages IT incidents and service requests directly with the users.

What is Tech Support?

Technical support handles issues requiring deeper technical expertise than a help desk or service desk usually provides. A tech support call center will take on the problems that can’t be resolved by the help desk—the issues that get upgraded to the higher tiers of IT support. Tech support agents require extensive technical knowledge and handle a variety of different issues.

Common Help Desk and Service Desk Problems

Help desks and service desks face several common challenges in distributed work environments.

1. Process Inefficiencies

Process inefficiencies, poor documentation, weak transparency, and poor security hygiene can slow support teams down. These issues can bog down the IT team, interfere with the ability to oversee and run health checks, and prevent important problems from being properly reported on.

2. Inadequate tools

Inadequate support tools often appear when organizations add cloud services, generative AI, new workforce models, or are experiencing a merger without enough planning. These types of reactive shifts with little pre-planning introduce shadow IT, which can cause blind spots in security.

3. Lack of training

Training gaps affect both end users and support professionals. First, there is a lack of end-user training that creates more demand on IT professionals, as more tickets get filed in response to user error or user misuse. Second, there is a lack of IT technology training for IT professionals. Helpdesks need continuous training to keep their skills and certifications up to date amid the rise of new technologies and new security risks. Additionally, many IT decision-makers are struggling to find IT professionals with the right skills to meet today’s technological needs. As a result, workers who lack these needed skills may have a longer learning curve and more intensive training to get up to speed.

4. Rate of change

Rapid technology change forces support teams to integrate new systems, document workflows, and secure access. This means IT support teams must work quickly to integrate new technologies, make data and documentation available through these technologies, and secure access without interfering with transparency or operability.

5. Perimeterless networks

Perimeterless networks require physical and cybersecurity controls that match distributed users, technologies, and multicloud environments.

How Do Teams Measure IT Support Effectiveness?

Teams measure it support effectiveness by tracking help desk performance, resolution speed, user satisfaction, cost, stability, and software use. Common key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to measure support team performance include ticket volume trends, ticket backlog, mean time to resolve (MTTR), first call / contact resolution rate (FCRR), end-user satisfaction, cost-per-ticket, lost business hours, change success rate, infrastructure stability, and software asset utilization rate.

Now, we will cover what each of these KPIs looks like:

Ticket volume trends: This indicates the total number of tickets that the IT support desk handles and the pattern of those numbers over a period of time. Analyzing these trends can indicate how much support is needed. Any increases or decreases in support requests after services are offered, or when new software or solutions are introduced, can help measure the effectiveness of implementation. Viewing this data can also help support teams optimize and manage resources, validate additional resource requirements, and plan ahead for peak times to ensure less downtime.

Ticket backlog: These are the customer support requests that are left unresolved. A ticket backlog can indicate whether or not your tech support team is resourced to handle the number of support requests that are filed. If the backlog is too high, further strategies may be needed to lower the number of tickets that are being filed (i.e., employee training on a specific tool or software).

Mean time to resolve (MTTR): This is the average time it takes for the IT support team to resolve a customer’s issue. The goal is to aim for short resolution times. Efficient IT support teams will use MTTR as a key metric to improve resolution performance. MTTR is different from the average first response time, which indicates the average length of time it takes for tech support to initiate a response to a ticket.

First call/contact resolution rate (FCRR): This indicates the percentage of tickets that are fully resolved within a single response. It might mean that the required fields on a support ticket prompt the user to submit enough information for the IT professional to assess and resolve the problem without needing to engage for follow-up information. A high first call resolution rate can also reflect that your tech support team has adequate training and resources to resolve a high proportion of issues upon first response. This metric is correlated to both end-user satisfaction and cost-per-ticket.

End-user satisfaction: Sometimes referred to as the customer satisfaction score (CSAT), this is another measure for support desk efficiency. High scores here will likely validate efficiencies being measured in the other categories.

Cost-per-ticket: This metric is calculated by dividing the total monthly operating expense of the help desk by the monthly ticket volume. The goal is to maintain consistent levels of costs. Spikes in cost can be indicative of inefficiencies, training needs, or resource requirements.

Lost business hours: These are the total calculated hours of business operability that are lost or disrupted over a time period due to IT issues. Help desk inefficiencies, under-resourcing, lack of training, and inadequate technical support tools can all impact this number.

Change success rate: This refers to the success rate of how adjustments or replacements to processes, systems, software, hardware, etc., are implemented within an organization. It also measures the number of successful changes compared to the number of executed changes. Failed changes are changes that did not meet their objectives. When tracking these numbers, it is also important to track the number of unplanned, emergency, or urgent changes.

Infrastructure stability: A good level of stability is characterized by a maximum availability of IT professionals and technology tools, a low number of lost business hours, and a low number of major incidents.

Software asset utilization rate: This refers to the percentage of software products and licenses that are in use by the business, categorized as software with high risk or high implication (category 1); free software (category 2); and prohibited software and malware (category 3).

Key metrics for measuring the effectiveness of IT support

Essential Support Tools for IT Teams

Effective IT support tools help teams communicate, manage tickets, resolve issues remotely, document knowledge, and track change. Consequently, it’s important to have the right ecosystem of IT support solutions in place. Top technologies for enabling your IT support team include communication technologies, ticketing tools and IT service management (ITSM), remote support tools, self-service or employee portal and knowledge base, and change / problem management tools.

1. Communication technologies

Communication tools help a modern help desk support users across onsite, remote, and hybrid environments. As such, it is important to establish and integrate communications technologies, including email, VoIP, teleconferencing, video calling, and chat. More types of communication mean more accessibility, but having an integrated source for these varied types of communication helps ensure efficiency of communication and higher levels of security.

2. Ticketing tools & IT service management (ITSM)

Ticketing tools and IT service management systems help teams open, assign, monitor, and report on support requests. An ITSM solution is a streamlined ticketing system that enables information tracking to allow those tickets to be opened, assigned, and for their progress and completion to be monitored and reported. A few top ITSM examples include ServiceNow, Cherwell Software, Zendesk, and JIRA.

3. Remote support tools

Remote support tools let technicians access, view, and troubleshoot computers, mobile devices, servers, point of sale systems, and other endpoints from another location. It allows them to view and interact with that device, facilitating tech assistance via an internet connection. Remote support tools help IT support teams navigate and manage the increasing complexity of today’s digital environments. They also help to maintain connectivity between multiple devices, software, cloud environments, and networks to ensure high levels of organizational productivity and to meet security compliance standards. Using a single tool for remote support can help improve incident handling time, technician productivity, and other important KPIs. Because remote support sessions often entail some degree of privileged access, it is important for robust remote access, password management, and other security features to be baked into the solution. In addition, the tool should monitor, log, and manage every remote support session to ensure proper oversight and auditability.

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4. Self-service employee portal / knowledge base

Self service portals and knowledge bases help users resolve common technical support issues without opening a ticket. The support portal should provide accurate and reliable guides, system documentation, FAQs, and an easy way to escalate more complicated issues to a help desk agent. Self-service portals / knowledge bases can also significantly reduce the task load for your IT support team by providing end users with instantly-available knowledge and training.

5. Change and problem management tools

Change and problem management tools help organizations plan, manage, report on, and audit technology changes. These can include projects, resource changes, etc. Change management tools will also help with the management of workflows and communication during complex process changes.

Essential Tech Support Features

Tech support tools should include chat, automation, collaboration, integration, self service, reporting, troubleshooting, and scalability.

Here are the roles that each of these features plays in a typical tech support environment:

Chat – Chat allows technicians to gather more information about a given issue faced by an end user. Additionally, it serves as a way for technicians to send links, knowledge base articles, and canned responses. Chats can also be used between tiers of the service desk, and potentially, with an external party. This ability to extend the reach of an initial touch point keeps the customer from feeling like they are being “bounced around.” It also allows the rep to expand their knowledge and exposure to problem-solving in real time. Chat transcripts should be available for audit and training purposes as well.
Automation – Automating some or many components of the help desk can free up time for your IT professional to focus on completing the higher-impact queries faster and more efficiently. For example, automatically running canned scripts in the background can solve common issues or illuminate problems faster. This can help the service desk increase efficiency and decrease resolution times.
Collaboration – Your IT team should be able to collaborate easily on queries. They should also be able to access, tag, prioritize, and assign tasks to ensure smooth operations. This collaboration could look like a Tier 1 tech working seamlessly with someone in Tier 3, or it could be a shared session with an external vendor/partner. Either way, collaboration is a powerful component as organizations strive to improve customer satisfaction.
Integration – APIs and service integrations are critical to ensuring the success of your digital and IT ecosystems. You don’t want your IT technologies to interfere with business operations—they should enhance them. One of the best ways to do this is to allow support activity to be initiated through the system of record (ITSM solution). Features that enhance the user experience include the ability for customers to generate sessions from the ticket they just opened, the ability for the tech to initiate support through the ticket they are responding to, and the ability to contextualize the audit logs that reside inside the ticket.
Self-service – Your end users should be able to troubleshoot for themselves, to a point, using an accessible dashboard or resource pool. This will keep your IT department focused on higher-impact tasks.
Reporting – One of the most critical components of success is auditability. Having the ability to submit and monitor reports easily means having access to accurate metrics that can be analyzed regularly to audit for success. Additionally, there are often external audit rules in industries like healthcare, financial services, and government entities. It is imperative that the solution employed for remote technical support balances internal reporting needs, compliance standards, and broader considerations, like GDPR, that seek to limit data collection.
Troubleshooting – The IT support systems should provide the transparency and visibility necessary for your team to quickly and easily troubleshoot problems, identify security threats, and more. Remote system control is often the core of a troubleshooting interaction. It is critical that these interactions are made simple for all parties. The messaging that is provided on session close is also important in many cases. For both attended and unattended sessions, it is often important to clarify that remote access has ceased at the end of the session.
Adaptability and Scalability – The best tech support tools are readily adaptable to changes in the IT and work environments. For instance, being able to shift from office-based to remote workforces. Further, these tools should be scalable so they can grow with the organization and its evolving needs.

Secure Remote Support with BeyondTrust

Secure remote support helps organizations keep technology running while controlling technician access, monitoring sessions, and supporting distributed users. As more organizations are trending towards digital transformation and remote work-from-anywhere environments, having properly equipped and resourced tech support is only becoming more critical.

Interested in learning more? Click here to continue to the second blog in our IT support series: 10 Must-Have Certifications for IT Support Professionals

“Remote Support has become so vital to our work that losing it would be like cutting us off at the knees.”

—Alex Shaffer, IT Supervisor, Karma Automotive

“Once we got a view of the cost and value for BeyondTrust Remote Support, we were like, why haven’t we done this sooner, honestly?”

—James Williams, Senior Network Engineer, Nash County Public Schools

"BeyondTrust Remote Support has enabled Keller to rein in disparate remote support tools and give field users unattended access to job site computers. Through the integration with ServiceNow, we've improved our onboarding to these teams for a seamless experience from request to resolution — entirely automated and without any IT interaction."

—Kamil Krezlewicz, Senior Security Administrator at Keller Group, and Evan Leake, Computer System Analyst at Keller Group

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IT Support FAQs

IT support is technical assistance for users or organizations experiencing hardware, software, access, or device issues. It can include troubleshooting, service desk support, remote support, password recovery, endpoint maintenance, and secure access support.

The five levels of tech support are Level 0, self help; Level 1, help desk or service desk support; Level 2, technical support; Level 3, expert product and service support; and Level 4, outside vendor or partner support.

Organizations can secure IT support access by applying least privilege, controlling remote support sessions, protecting privileged credentials, and maintaining audit trails for every support action. BeyondTrust Remote Support helps teams manage secure support access, session activity, and technician permissions, while BeyondTrust Password Safe helps manage and monitor the privileged credentials used during support.

About the Author

Laura Bohnert

Director, Public Relations

As the Director of Public Relations at BeyondTrust, Laura Bohnert applies a multifaceted, tech-centered marketing skillset to help drive SEO, blog, PR, and product marketing in support of BeyondTrust’s demand generation and sales enablement initiatives. She has a diverse background in product marketing, brand marketing, content writing, social media, event coordination, and public relations. Outside of the tech world, she has a passion for literature, with a BA, MA, and PhD Candidacy in English Literature, and she can either be found beekeeping, restoring her historic haunted house, or continuing her dissertation on the psychological interpretations of ghosts in gothic and horror fiction.