I’m wondering if anyone can help me with ITIL or industry standard definitions of Tier 1, 2 and 3 (or first-line, second-line, and third-line) support roles in Incident Management.
ITIL doesn’t differentiate based upon the skill level or ability to resolve issues for 1st Level, 2nd Level, 3rd Level. ITIL defines the 1st Level as the Service Desk. Whether the Service Desk is empowered to resolve any issues on the first call is not relevant. The Service Desk is the point of contact for the Customer. They are the 1st Level.
If your organization enables the 1st Level to resolve on first call, great (what ITIL defines as a “Skilled Service Desk”). If your organization has a Service Desk that simply logs the issue and transfers it without attempting to resolve it, that’s also fine (ITIL calls this an “Unskilled Service Desk”). Either way, the first point of contact is always the 1st Level.
If the Service Desk is unable to resolve the issue, then it is transferred to the 2nd Level. It doesn’t matter if that 2nd Level is more technically capable or simply has greater authority. There may be multiple 2nd Level support groups, each with their own area of specialty. ITIL doesn’t really define what the 3rd Level support would be, but most organizations I have interacted with define the 3rd Level as external support groups.
The way I usually explain is it this way:
A call comes into the Service Desk (1st Level). They are unable to resolve the issue so they transfer it to a 2nd Level support group. Let’s say that this is the internal server team. The server team investigates the issue, and they determine that it is not an issue in their domain so they transfer it to the telecom group. This is still an internal support group, so it would be another 2nd Level functional support group. The telecom group determines that it is a vendor issue, so they transfer it to the vendor’s telecom support group. Because the vendor is an external agency, they are defined as a 3rd Level support group.
But remember that ITIL is a set of guidelines. Not rules that are defined in stone.
If your organization defines 2nd, 3rd, 4th, Nth level groups differently, then you aren’t breaking any ITIL definitions.
The only definition that ITIL has is that the Service Desk is the 1st Level group.
Leave a Reply