What Are IT Support Levels? L1, L2, L3 Explained

Q: What are IT support levels?

IT support levels divide support responsibilities across L1, L2, and L3 teams based on skill requirements and issue complexity.

IT support levels represent a structured way for IT teams to handle incidents based on complexity and required expertise. Each support level has defined responsibilities, escalation rules, and goals.

L1 Support — First Line

L1 support handles basic troubleshooting, password resets, device setup, and user-facing issues. They gather context and resolve common problems quickly.

L2 Support — Technical Analysts

L2 teams manage more complex issues requiring deeper diagnostic skills. They review logs, replicate issues, and investigate underlying technical failures.

L3 Support — Engineers & Specialists

L3 handles advanced problems such as critical outages, database failures, infrastructure issues, or bugs that require code-level intervention.

How Escalation Flows

Tickets move from L1 → L2 → L3 when the previous level cannot resolve the issue. According to Atlassian, clear escalation paths improve resolution speed and customer satisfaction.

Learn More About Support Frameworks

General technical support structures can be studied on
Wikipedia.

How TicketingNext Helps IT Teams

TicketingNext supports L1–L3 operations with routing rules, escalation workflows, SLA timers, and analytics dashboards. Explore our
TicketingNext features or review
support use cases.

Need help structuring your support tiers? Contact our team.