Working in technology consists of specific roles and structure. Sometimes this gets a bit confusing from the outset but is very simple and straightforward when you work for an organisation.
A 1st and 2nd line support technician is another acronym for a technical support engineer, however, some organisations provide 2nd line for roles for more advanced technicians.
Depending on the organisation the roles differ but in general, they are the same roles as support technicians.
What is 1st and 2nd line within an Organisation?
A 1st and 2nd line support technician is responsible for all technical issues that arise within a given organisation and resolves them accordingly. They are the first point of contact for resolving any issues or queries. If for whatever they are unable to do so, the ticket is then escalated to the relevant resource such as 2nd/3rd line support.
Although most companies combine 1st and 2nd line support as fundamentally being the same team other companies decide to separate them. For example, if your working for a media company a first-line support technician may only deal with technical issues whereas a 2ndline engineer will focus on media technology.
The 2nd line support may have extensive experience with media equipment such as advanced troubleshooting with Adobe, bespoke media applications.
In other organisations, 1st and 2ndline support technicians are completely separated. a 1st line may just create tickets for end users, understand and report the technical faults and then hand it over to the 2nd line support technician to diagnose and solve the problem.
As you can see there are various concepts when it comes to understanding 1st and 2nd line roles, it all depends on the organisation.
The widespread agreement is that 1st and 2ndline role is the same simply because of the skills required for the role alongside the customer service to end-users.
Common duties of a 1st and 2nd line Support
Drawing on the earlier conclusion that the widespread agreement is that 1st and 2nd line support technicians have the same role.
| 1st line Support | 2nd line Support |
|---|---|
| General customer service skills | Advanced technical issues such as applications crashing |
| Ability to log tickets | Resolving 1st line queireies and issues from 1st line support. |
| First level support (resetting passwords, creating accounts, board room checks). | Windows 10 & MacOS troubleshooting and implementation |
| Diagnosing hardware and software issues | Assisting 3rd line projects and implementation |
| User creation AD, Office 365, ticketing solutions and bespoke applications | Creation of documentation and step by step guides for junior members of staff |
| Escalating 2nd/3rd line issues where necessary | Advanced troubleshooting and diagnostic finding. |
As you can see some of the roles of the 1st/2nd line has a few differences. The 2nd line technicians look into the actual technical problems more closely and deeper than the 1st line support. 1st line support will try troubleshooting the issue through a series of steps once they have exhastived their means they would escalate to the 2nd line support team. The 2nd line support team usually have more experience and more training than the 1st line support engineers in most cases.
