Something strange happening with your brand-new laptop? Trying and failing to log in to your company’s new cloud-based messaging platform? Who you gonna call?
Probably the help-desk analyst.
These professionals deal with dozens of such inquiries every day, making the role one of the most important and visible in IT. It’s an excellent starting point for tech-savvy people with strong interpersonal skills and a foundation for further steps in building an IT career.
But what does a help-desk analyst’s average workday look like? Here’s a quick overview.
A tiered role for help-desk analysts
Help desk analysts are on the frontline of customer support. If they can, they resolve users’ technical issues themselves. If they can’t, they connect users with more experienced colleagues. Here are the three levels of analysts:
- A Tier 1 help desk analyst typically takes the initial customer inquiry (usually submitted as a ticket via a self-service portal) and manages relatively simple hardware, software or network issues. If they can’t address the problem, they escalate it to a Tier 2 analyst.
- A Tier 2 analyst can resolve more complex systems and applications problems. In addition, these middle-tier analysts often maintain the company’s IT ticketing system (see Ticket maintenance below). Tier 2 analysts can assign or re-assign a ticket to a Tier 3 analyst when confronted with a problem they can’t solve.
- A Tier 3 analyst researches and resolves the most complex issues that other help desk levels have been unable to fix. They also identify trends in issue reporting and come up with preventative solutions.
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