Hi Anthony,
We have had Premier/Tier 1 for 4 years and it has allowed our instructional designers to focus on instructional design and not on tech support. Our faculty love having the 24/7 line, many of them keep odd hours and our office is only open from 8-5 and I even called them yesterday at 10:30pm about an issue. TAs and staff can also call but not students, our IT student helpdesk was willing to support students with Tier 1 so we could focus on helping the faculty and being a local Tier 2/3 for student issues. We still take calls but setup a menu option on our main line so when a person calls they can either be redirected to Instructure support or talk with someone in our department.
To get the most out of it we distribute contact cards with various contacts for different areas such as IT Helpdesk, Classroom support, and Instructure support. Our instructional designers also let faculty know they can call that number and get support. So we try to market it as much as possible. We also make sure to relay any information that will help support direct a caller if they are unable to help. When you contract with support they will ask for procedure documentation and having clear guidelines on scenarios and how to handle them will make it much easier on all parties.
One gotcha was we opted out on adding student support but sometimes professors will tell students to call the support number for help. It hasn't happened very often but Instructure support is willing to help them still, which is awesome, but they drop us a line to make sure the professor knows that students should be calling the student service desk for help. It has been pretty smooth sailing with support and if we do have issues we are able to get them resolved.
Best,
Tyler
