Tier 2 support is the escalation team that handles tickets Tier 1 couldn't resolve, typically because the issue needs deeper technical knowledge, higher account access, or specialized expertise in an area like billing disputes or technical troubleshooting.

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‍Why it matters

Tier 2 teams are usually organized around specific types of problems rather than general support, since the point of escalating is to reach someone with a narrower but deeper skill set than a generalist Tier 1 agent. This specialization means Tier 2 handles a smaller volume of tickets but spends more time on each one.

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‍Why it needs different metrics than Tier 1

Judging a Tier 2 agent on the same speed-focused metrics used for Tier 1, like average handle time, usually backfires, since Tier 2 tickets are inherently more complex and rushing them defeats the reason the ticket was escalated in the first place. Teams that get this right weight Tier 2 performance more toward resolution quality and first-time-fix rate than raw speed.