which one a Technical Support or Help Desk

Sat Mar 3 20:00:16 UTC 2012

At a Small-to-Medium ISP I worked for, they went through structuring changes like this all the time.  But the following seems to be the best setup:

First was "Customer Support" which dealt with billing and basic instruction (setup mail clients, reset passwords, etc).

Second tier was "Customer Data Support" or CDS, which covered troubleshooting connectivity and doing advanced instruction.

Third tier support was the Network Operations Center.  CDS escalated to them if there was a particularly difficult or CO Equipment related issue.

The NOC could then escalate to the actual Engineering department or to the CO Repair staff as needed.

--

The nice thing about this setup was that it grew with the company.  Each of those departments started out as one or two people, but grew their own sub-tiers/sub-teams as systems grew and became more complicated.

Also, the name didn't really matter too much to the customer.  They chose the option for "Problems with your connection or if you need technical support" from the phone tree, and we just answered with the company's name.  We never said "Customer Data Support, this is Brett", just "CompanyX, this is Brett"

There are a couple of good System Administration guide books out there that give basic Help Desk structuring and reporting paths.  They are usually geared more towards the enterprise, but some good information can be gleaned from them as well.

Hope this helps,

-Brett Lykins

On Mar 3, 2012, at 2:46 AM, Tarig Adam wrote:

> I am working for a new Small ISP and we are trying to establish a
> center for receiving technical calls and inquires from customers and
> the technicians in this center may do some basics troubleshooting.
> 
> What is the suitable title for this center and what we should call
> this people who do this job? Technical Support, Helpdesk, or Call
> Center. does each term has a specific meaning?
> And is there any standard structure of this center? And what is the
> relation of this people with other network/software Engineers?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Tarig Adam
> 