Program Overview:

IT Support: Fundamentals

If you are interested in pursuing a career in IT Support, this course examines basic job skills that can help ensure you become a successful support agent. In this course, you will be introduced to and better understand the role of an IT support agent, including core priorities and key responsibilities. You will learn how to improve your support skills by interacting with other roles and mastering specific performance skills. The course then examines what influences customer behavior when dealing with IT Support, including global cultural differences and communication styles. The course concludes with an introduction to the basic stages of case management, from initial receipt of a support call through solution development and closure.

IT Support Communication

If you are interested in pursuing a career in IT Support, this course examines how to improve your basic customer communication skills. This course provides insights into the communication skills and acumen needed to be a successful support agent. Effective communication, both with the customer and with internal resources at your company, is critical to the success of anyone considering a role in IT Support. The course begins with a review of effective communication strategies that will help you develop a rapport with your customer. You then examine ways to connect with your customer through phone, email, chat, and social media, including a demonstration of empathy and communicating at the customer’s level of expertise. Finally, you examine how to deal with challenging customers and how to defuse a customer’s anger. At the completion of the course, you will have a greater appreciation for the communication skills that a successful support agent needs to develop.

IT Support: Hardware Essentials

IT Support: Hardware Essentials is designed to introduce students to a basic understanding of the different types of computing devices (desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.), computer components (CPU, memory, power supplies, etc.) as well as peripheral devices, storage devices, displays and connection interfaces. This course also includes an introduction to basic hardware troubleshooting skills.

IT Support: Networking Essentials

Learn the essentials of networks from basic network components to how the Internet connects all over the world.IT Support: Networking Essentials is designed to introduce the core networking concepts to learners who are new to IT Support. The course begins by explaining the purpose of networking and then examines how networks are configured in homes, offices, between offices, and around the world with the Internet. This includes a review of network topologies, physical networking, and network protocols. The course concludes with an introduction to network troubleshooting, including how to troubleshoot common networking issues.

IT Support Documentation

If you are interested in pursuing a career in IT Support, this course examines best practices you should employ when documenting support cases. This course dives deep into the case management process and how to identify key issues that need to be documented throughout the evolution of a case. You will examine the reasons why documentation is so critical in the field of IT Support, and why it is so crucial for capturing all viewpoints within case documentation, from the support agent, to the customer, and to any other internal resource who may get involved. The course begins with an analysis of how to document different types of support cases, from advisory cases to reactive cases to escalated cases. The course then introduces you to various types of tools used to document cases. And finally, the course concludes with an examination of the different types of questions that a support agent needs to ask and document based on specific workflow situations. At the completion of the course, the student will have a greater appreciation for the importance of maintaining complete, detailed, and accurate documentation and when and how to apply that knowledge.

Program Objectives:

• Identify the core priorities and key responsibilities of a support agent
• Identify the performance skills a support agent should master
• Understand what drives customer behavior when interacting with support agents
• Examine how cultural dimensions and communication styles affect customer behavior
• Learn how different cultures view time
• Examine the basic stages of IT Support case management
• Introduce effective communication strategies
• Interpret and paraphrase the customer’s message
• Demonstrate empathy towards your customer
• Review chat etiquette best practices
• Communicate at the customer’s level of expertise
• Differentiate between implicit vs. explicit customer messages
• Understand how to respond effectively through phone, email, chat, and social media
• Satisfy a challenging customer and defuse the customer’s anger
• Describe computing devices
• Understand PC and laptop hardware components
• Troubleshoot common hardware issues
• Troubleshoot common mobile device and connected device issues
• Understanding networking topologies
• Understanding LANs, WANs and the Internet
• Understanding wireless and wired networks
• Understanding network protocols
• Understanding TCP/IP
• Troubleshooting networking using built-in networking tools
• Understand what the key requirements are that should be documented when escalating a case, as well as when to conduct warm transfers
• Examine the types of tools that are commonly used to capture customer data

Audience: 

This course is intended for: 

• Anybody who is interested in starting a career in Offensive security
• Existing security managers
• Pen testers trying to increase their knowledge of new content in Offensive Security operations

Prerequisites:

• Basic IT Skills
• Knowledge of Information Security basics