L1 Help Desk Covering Multiple Time Zones

About the Customer

The Customer is a construction consultancy with offices across three continents.

Need for Prompt L1 Support across Multiple Regions

As the Customer’s global presence grew, its internal IT support department faced the challenge of managing an increased volume of tickets from its geographically distributed offices. So, the Customer sought a professional help desk provider to ensure prompt and efficient 24/7 L1 support for its employees across EMEA, APAC, and North America.

Successfully Resolving 60% of Incoming Ticket Load at L1

To cover the support needs of the Customer’s employees across different regions and time zones, ScienceSoft assembled an L1 support team consisting of five help desk agents with an extra person available on high-load days.

The Customer’s employees could contact our L1 support agents via email or the internal portal. Every incoming ticket was registered in Freshdesk, enabling ticket prioritization, escalation and tracking. Serving as a first point of contact for the Customer’s employees, ScienceSoft handled a workload of 700 tickets per month. With time, the ticket volume increased, reaching a monthly peak of 1,000.

Our support agents were responsible for addressing all L1 incidents reported by the Customer’s employees, which amounted to approximately 60% of all incoming issues. This took the load off the Customer’s internal IT department and helped them focus on tackling more complex technical challenges.

ScienceSoft's L1 engineers handled the following issues:

• User administration (incl. user profile editing, fixing authentification issues, adding users to distribution and security groups).
• Resolving username and password problems.
• Providing access to Google Workspace.
• Remotely troubleshooting incidents with peripheral devices (printers, microphones, headsets, etc.).
• Handling basic issues with PCs and laptops (setting correct time, driver updates, etc.).
• Installing, configuring, updating, and uninstalling user-side software.
• Handling user requests and issues concerning Microsoft 365 apps (e.g., editing Teams and Outlook profiles, adding email signatures, tackling email delivery issues in Outlook).
• Escalating the tickets that required more complex solutions or a higher level of access to the Customer’s in-house L2 support team.

When new tickets were received, ScienceSoft's team classified them based on their urgency and severity. The first response time (FRT) for emails and incoming tickets was 30 minutes or less. The average resolution time (ART) was under 12 hours, with high-priority tickets receiving immediate resolution. The Customer also got a comprehensive overview of help desk performance thanks to our weekly and monthly KPI reports covering the number of received tickets, the percentage of resolved ones, FRT, ART, etc.

Key Outcomes for the Customer

• Efficient and timely help desk assistance for the Customer’s employees across multiple regions and time zones: EMEA, APAC, US, and Canada.
• ScienceSoft handled 60% of all incoming tickets at L1, helping the Customer’s in-house L2 support team focus on more advanced technical tasks.
• <30 minutes first response time.
• <12 hours average ticket resolution time, ensuring high-priority cases receive immediate attention and resolution.

Tools

Freshdesk, Microsoft Teams, Check Point Remote Access VPN, NinjaOne, Active Directory.