Web Development

I've worked for a number of companies and what they all agree on is that level 1/tier 1 is the first point of contact - in most cases thats a help desk.

Second level would be operational people outside of the help desk - desktop techs, data centre staff, network staff etc.

Third level is most often an in house expert, software developer, vendor etc.

These have been the definitions used in companies I have worked in from 3000 employees to 100,000 employees.

James

Tier-1 will/should be always the 1st level of support.

This will vary from company to company as will the other levels.

Usually it will be based on the makeup of the company. There is no "real" set standards. It is usually just definitions used by IT dept's to designate who does what. And how escalation is handled.

You generally can't call tier-3 people right off the bat. It has to go thru tier-1, they escalate it to tier-2 and up the chain to tier-n.

Don't know where you would find "defined" standards, but somewhere like the HelpDesk Institute or similar may have something?

Our 1st level support (or Tier 1) is the Help Desk it self, if they can fix the probem it is resolved at level 1. If they can't fix it (due to time, expertise or it's just best to do it onsite) it comes out to us at level 2. If we can;t fix it, we go see the 3rd level (admin, expert) who may suggest a fix or take it on themselves.