First Line Support Specialist in Manchester

Job Title: First Line Support Specialist

Reports to: Operations Support Centre Manager

About FourNet

FourNet is one of the UK's most successful cloud and managed service providers. We have grown year on year for the last 15 years, won multiple awards, and support some of the UK's most secure, critical and commercially driven organisations.

About the role

We are expanding our 24/7 Operational Support Centre and are looking for First Line Support Specialists to join a growing team providing critical first-line support across our managed service portfolio.

This is an opportunity to build a career in a fast-paced, customer-focused technical environment, supporting organisations that rely on FourNet to keep essential services available.

We are looking for self-motivated, customer-focused individuals who enjoy problem solving, communicate clearly and want to develop their skills within IT, communications and managed services.

Working pattern

• The Operational Support Centre is available to customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
• The role is hybrid, with 3 days working from the Manchester office.
• You will support the 24/7 FLSS operation, including queue oversight, escalation support, workload management and service continuity across shift-based activity.

What you'll be doing

As a First Line Support Specialist, you will be the first point of contact when faults occur, providing clear communication, structured triage and timely ownership of customer issues.

You will assess the impact and priority of incidents, use agreed procedures and knowledge articles, and work with resolver groups where further technical support is required. The focus is on restoring service quickly, keeping customers informed and ensuring each case is managed from initial contact through to closure.

The role will also involve proactive monitoring, service desk administration, customer updates, escalation management and supporting routine changes, updates, patches or fixes during shift hours where appropriate and in line with agreed processes.

Although this is not an apprenticeship or trainee position, it is a strong development opportunity for candidates who want to progress into more advanced technical support roles over time.

Key responsibilities

• Act as a first point of contact for customers, ensuring service-related queries, incidents and requests are handled professionally and kept moving.
• Provide first-line technical triage across application, infrastructure and managed service environments, using agreed processes and available knowledge resources.
• Capture accurate information, assess impact and priority, and ensure cases are categorised, updated and progressed in line with agreed service levels.
• Keep customers informed throughout the lifecycle of their case, providing clear, timely and professional updates.
• Escalate incidents to the appropriate resolver groups, suppliers or support partners when required, while maintaining ownership and visibility through to resolution.
• Support major incident and problem management activity by providing accurate updates, following escalation routes and assisting with customer communications where required.
• Monitor alarms and service alerts proactively, taking appropriate action in line with agreed procedures.
• Support routine operational tasks such as system updates, patches, checks and fixes during shift hours where required and authorised.
• Contribute to Root Cause Analysis, Reason for Outage information, managed service reporting and service improvement activity where required.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues, engineers, suppliers and Service Delivery Managers to deliver a consistent and high-quality customer experience.

Person Specification

Essential skills and experience

• Previous customer service experience, ideally within a service desk, contact centre, technical support or managed service environment.
• A strong interest in information technology, communications and managed services.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to explain issues clearly to customers and colleagues.
• Strong organisational skills, attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple cases or priorities at the same time.
• A responsible and reliable approach to shift work, including working outside standard business hours as part of a 24/7 operation.
• A positive, calm and professional approach when working under pressure.
• A proactive attitude, willingness to learn and ability to work effectively as part of a team.

Desirable Skills (not mandatory)

• ITIL Foundation Certification.
• Networking experience, such as Cisco CCNA or similar.
• Technical awareness across networking, communications, cloud, applications or managed service environments.

Traits and Behaviours

• Customer focus - committed to delivering a professional, helpful and consistent service experience through clear expectations and strong service standards.
• Teamwork - works collaboratively with FLSS engineers, Tier 2/3 teams, suppliers, customers and stakeholders to achieve the right outcome.
• Ownership - takes responsibility for queue health, escalation visibility, quality standards, follow-up actions and team support.
• Coaching mindset - develops others through feedback, knowledge sharing, practical guidance and regular support.
• Continuous improvement - looks for opportunities to improve knowledge, processes, reporting, documentation and the customer experience.

Personal Attributes/Skills

• Communication - communicates clearly and professionally in writing, face to face, over the phone and through service updates.
• Problem solving - gathers information, asks the right questions and uses logical steps to identify the next action.
• Personal effectiveness - remains organised, focused and professional when managing people support, operational workload and competing priorities.
• Decision making - uses available information to make appropriate operational decisions and escalates when needed.
• Business awareness - understands the importance of service availability, customer impact, SLAs, escalation quality and professional service delivery.
• Data awareness - uses reporting, trends and KPI information to identify risks, improvement opportunities and training needs.

This job description provides an overview of the main responsibilities of the role. Duties may change over time in line with business needs, customer requirements and the continued development of the Operational Support Centre.