Tier 1 tickets don’t require deep technical expertise. Issues such as password resets, locked accounts, or printers that won’t connect are generally resolved within minutes. Instead, the situation actually gets more complicated at Tier 2, where a ticket requires advanced troubleshooting with no one available to handle it.
This is a gap that needs to be addressed immediately and effectively.
We’ve watched this gap drive many companies toward what’s now called co-managed IT support. This is a setup where the in-house team keeps ownership of strategy and priorities, and an outsourced partner covers Tier 1 and Tier 2 support work.
31West works with businesses across a range of industries, and the story from one client to the next is more or less similar. When internal staff are pulled into routine tasks and are constantly busy dealing with “routine fires”, the specialized roles they exist for suffer.
A hybrid Tier 1 and Tier 2 outsourcing model addresses that problem without asking anyone to give up control of their environment. In this piece, we’ll walk through what such a model looks like, why it’s picking up so much momentum, and what to watch for before signing with a partner.
Let’s begin with understanding what the hybrid model is all about.
What a Hybrid Tier 1/Tier 2 Model Actually Means
In a hybrid setup, support responsibilities get divided between internal and external teams. In such an environment, the high-volume, low-complexity Tier 1 work usually goes to the outsourced team.
But the issues that require deeper technical knowledge, i.e., Tier 2 issues, may be shared between internal staff and the outsourced desk.
This is different from a fully outsourced help desk or from staffing everything in-house (expensive and doesn’t scale adequately). In fact, co-managed IT support is somewhere in between: your team stays close to security policy and vendor relationships, while an outsourcing partner absorbs routine and mid-tier tickets.
Honestly, this distinction also matters a lot to customers, as nobody wants to hand over their entire environment to a stranger. Customers or companies want relief from ticket backlog. But they want visibility of what’s happening between the outsourced team and the company. Clients often complain that their prior outsourcing attempt didn’t work because they felt locked out of their own systems.
A well-structured hybrid arrangement is built specifically to avoid that outcome:
- Access stays defined
- Reporting stays transparent
- Nothing major or critical occurs without the client knowing
Some hybrid arrangements also keep Tier 2 fully in-house while outsourcing only Tier 1. Such customers treat the outsourced layer as a filter that catches volume before it reaches internal staff.
There are major factors affecting this change; we discuss it in the next section.
Why This Is Gaining Ground Right Now
Escalations are climbing: research out of HDI’s Service & Support World states that 20 to 30% of tickets now reach Tier 2 or higher, with knowledge gaps a major reason. Such a large volume of tickets often sits in the queue because the person who can resolve them is unavailable.
That brings us to hiring, which hasn’t gotten any easier either. It is becoming evident that a large majority of the IT workforce is non-versatile today in terms of skills. They are unable to keep up with changing job requirements. This means that hiring a competent Tier 2 internal team is tedious.
To understand the consequences, consider a client in need of a Tier 2 technician who actually understands networking and security fundamentals. Unfortunately, the search runs three or four months past where they expected it to end, leading to a massive backlog and resource strain. Meanwhile, the ticket queue keeps growing, forcing the rest of the team, qualified or not, to try and absorb the overflow.
A hybrid outsourcing model skips that wait by supplying specialists who are already trained, available, and used to working inside varied environments.
We understand that leadership wants predictable IT spend, and a full-time hire comes with a lot of costs. Costs that don’t show up on the initial offer letter, such as benefits, training time, equipment, and the ramp-up period.
A hybrid model doesn’t get rid of them, but these costs get absorbed into the outsourcing partner’s operation instead of yours.
The Benefits That Gravitate Customers Toward the Hybrid Model
Now that you know why the hybrid model is popular among companies, let’s not forget to discuss its benefits.
● Cost-Effective, Without Taking Away Control
In-house teams have fixed costs associated with them that include salaries, benefits, training, and employee turnover. A hybrid help desk team often costs a part or even a fraction of that and scales as per demand.
Your core team still makes the decisions that matter.
In this scenario, you’re not paying for idle seats in a slow month, or scrambling when volume spikes. With the right outsourcing partner like 31West, clients can reduce support costs significantly by shifting Tier 1 volume off their books.
● Fewer Bottlenecks To Worry About
When an outsourced team handles Tier 1, your Tier 2 staff no longer get dragged into basic troubleshooting all day. Resolution times drop noticeably; tickets are resolved instead of sitting in a queue while someone becomes available.
● Specialized Skills Are Available On Demand
A lot of Tier 2 work needs niche knowledge: advanced networking and application-specific troubleshooting. Building that Tier 2 team internally takes time and money most companies may not have. Instead, a co-managed setup gives you access to existing specialists, with no recruiting cycle or attrition to worry about.
For instance, if a ticket needs someone who’s worked on a particular platform for years, that person is probably already on staff in the partner’s ready team.
● Room To Scale
Seasonal spikes, a new office opening, or a merger all create sudden demand for support. A tiered model scales up or down without going through the hiring process, onboarding, or even layoffs a few months later.
A Scenario To Illustrate the Benefits of Hybrid Tier 1 and Tier 2 Outsourcing Models
A mid-sized company was running a four-person internal IT team. They eventually moved to co-managed IT support. But before that, the team spent most of its week on password resets, software installs, and basic connectivity complaints; there was no time for security audits or actual infrastructure planning.
However, once Tier 1 shifted to an outsourced partner and Tier 2 became a shared responsibility, the internal team suddenly had room to work on things. These were critical tasks that would help the business grow. The best part is that end users didn’t notice a dip in service. On the contrary, tickets moved faster, courtesy of the outsourced team.
Within a few months, a backlog of overdue patching work had been cleared. Some outdated access policies had been rewritten, and a project they’d been putting off for over a year finally commenced. All of this and the company had to add zero headcount to get all that done.
The lesson is clear: Replacing your team is not the goal; clearing enough space for them to do the job they were actually hired for is.
When It’s Down to Picking the Right Partner, Take Your Time
Not every provider is set up for a true hybrid arrangement. A few questions are worth asking before signing anything:
- Does the provider plug into your existing ticketing and ITSM tools?
- Are you being pushed onto a new platform?
- Are escalation triggers between Tier 1 and Tier 2 clearly defined?
- What’s the protocol for credential handling and access logging?
- Can the arrangement scale up or down without renegotiating the contract?
- How is knowledge transfer handled when a ticket bounces between the outsourced team and your internal staff?
We’ve seen arrangements fall apart because nobody defined where one team’s responsibility ended, and the other’s began. The sooner you get that in writing, the better you are positioned to avoid friction.
Also ask how a provider handles security and compliance, more so if you’re in a regulated industry. This includes credential handling, audit trails, and data access policies.
If you’re still wondering whether co-managed IT support fits your team, we’re glad to talk it through. Reach out to us at 31West, and we’ll help you figure it out.
