Most telecom/technology expense management (TEM) leaders find themselves managing a significant portion of their communications spend around mobility services. According to Grand View Research, the mobile data services segment held the largest share of the telecom services market at 37% in 2022, which is attributable to the growing usage of smartphones.
Most enterprises with $5 million plus in annual TEM spending for either fixed and mobile services, or mobile services alone will benefit from managed mobility services. Smaller organizations with a mobile device count of 500 devices or more will also meet the basic threshold that most managed mobility services (MMS) providers will want to see to make a sound business case for a fuller suite of mobility support services.
For enterprises that meet these thresholds, TEM/MMS providers will offer a variety of mobility services to assist internal enterprise expense management teams with procuring the right mobility devices, operating and maintaining them, as well as assisting with various other mobile lifecycle management activities.
In this article, we will focus on some of the fundamentals around mobile help desk support.
Mobile Help Desk Support Tiers – Which Makes Sense for You: Tier 1 or Tier?
The answer depends on your organization’s unique mobile communications situation.
- Tier 1 mobility support is the primary mobility help desk option that deals with common and day-to-day types of items (more details below).
- Tier 2 mobility support involves more comprehensive and technologically advanced support (more details below).
When speaking to potential MMS partners during your MMS provider discovery process, you will want to ask each about their approach, their supporting technology platform, and what level of support they feel best to satisfy your organization’s needs.
For example, what does tier 1 vs. tier 2 mobile support mean specifically in their organization?
Of course, different providers will each present with different pros and cons that only you and your team will be best prepared to evaluate.
Before providing general overviews of both tier 1 and tier 2 mobile help desk offerings, it’s worth stressing a few things – some of which we already noted above – when engaging in MMS provider discovery conversations:
- Are we a large enough enterprise organization that you can guarantee a positive ROI for our TEM/MMS service? (500 devices is a commonly used industry standard.)
- How can your MMS technology platform help manage our universe of mobility devices and, most importantly, add real value beyond our current approach? (You will want a deep-dive demo.)
- What is the average experience and skill level of those on your managed mobility services team? (These folks will become an extension of your team, so they matter a great deal.)
- Will tier 1 support suffice for now? If so, at what point will we likely need to transition to tier 2 support?
Mobile Help Desk – Tier 1 Support
Basic mobile service and plan support for your team: Your employees will, undoubtedly, have questions from time to time about the mobility plan they are on, or features or usage related to the plan they are on.
Support typically includes account/device setup assistance as well as password resets and security updates.
A competent MMS provider will be able to assist via skilled mobility subject-matter-experts. They’ll be able to address user queries promptly and succinctly.
Mobile device troubleshooting for your team: Think of any type of situation where your employee is struggling with one problem or another. Maybe they can’t get their mobile phone to work properly. Or there is some technical issue relating to an application et cetera.
This is a major value-add for any frustrated employees you may have. You want them happily engaged in their work and do not want them engaged in struggles to fix their mobile technology. Let the mobility pros do it.
Mobile ticket processing and escalation support for your team: A good mobile help desk support team will be able to either: (1) quickly address and resolve any questions or issues, or (2) route them quickly to someone else connected to the organization or another resource that will be able to resolve the issue.
In sum, a strong mobile help desk team will own your problem. They will take care of it one way or another, they won’t just hand the device back to you and say, “Sorry… not sure what to do here.”
Mobile support documentation of common issues for your team: A knowledgeable and skilled team will have, as part of its process, best practices around documenting your organization’s most prevalent mobility issues and the solutions for them.
A strong mobility help desk team will ensure that lessons learned are properly socialized and documented for the benefit of the entire organization; there are no reinvented wheels here.
Now, let’s look at common offerings within tier 2 support, which your organization may need now or at some point in the future.
It’s most important to remember the concept here (e.g., tier 1 vs. tier 2), as each organization will break things out a little differently and refer to service support areas slightly differently as well.
Mobile Help Desk – Tier 2 Support
Advanced mobile device troubleshooting for enterprises with greater complexity: Much like the troubleshooting bullet noted above, this is important because you absolutely do not want frustrated or exasperated employees.
It’s imperative that your employees not fight the mobile technology you are providing them with. It’s there to make their lives easier.
For organizations that have much larger mobile communications expenditures and device counts, it’s often the case that they have more complexity within their mobility program (e.g., perhaps a greater variety of plans, devices, and features), and therefore may very well benefit from a beefier mobility help desk support package.
If your organization truly needs this level of mobility support, it will almost certainly justify itself in terms of any additional cost.
Mobility connectivity support for enterprises with greater complexity: As noted above, for larger organizations that may have more mobility network complexity, connectivity issues need to be prioritized.
If there are any issues relating to connectivity, a strong tier 2 mobility help desk team will be able to address them quickly, given their fluency in industry best practices and knowledge of standard industry-wide issues, many of which involve mobile connectivity.
For example, are there Wi-Fi connection issues related to the network? Or is there no network signal or weak signal for the device? Or potential roaming problem?
Mobility applications, operating systems, software support, and device optimization for enterprises with greater complexity: Software updates, firmware updates, security updates et cetera can be problematic and troublesome. It’s also common to see device management issues (e.g., think of device memory problems) that users can benefit from help desk support.
Issues that may potentially arise because of utilizing different mobile applications are common, especially for larger enterprises that have a more nuanced mobility environment.
This is another area that tier 2 mobility teams will add tremendous value to given that easily identifiable solutions will not be readily amenable to users themselves.
Enterprise-wide mobility collaboration for organizations with greater complexity: Like tier 1 support, a strong tier 2 mobile help desk team will execute well-conceived escalation procedures and thoroughly document issues, and corresponding resolutions, and disseminate findings appropriately throughout the organization for overall organizational effectiveness.
Strong tier 2 mobile help desk teams will generally leave no stone unturned in terms of intra-organizational reach for remedies to complex problems; they’ll collaborate with engineering, the IT team, and any/all technical resources required.
Mobility Help Desk is a Win for Most Enterprises
Mobile help desk support is important, especially for larger modern-day enterprises. Many enterprises will suffice with tier 1 mobile help desk support, but others may need a slightly more robust help desk offering such as tier 2.
When interviewing MMS providers, inquire deeply about their approach to mobility help desk support and pay close attention to their mobile technology platform and how it will support the overall help desk process.
If you’d like to consider Tellennium in your TEM vendor comparisons, contact us to schedule a brief demo of our solution.
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