An IT Helpdesk That Closes Tickets, Not Just Opens Them
Phone, email, portal, or chat. Real people on the other end with the access and authority to fix things instead of escalating in circles. SLA-backed response times and clear monthly reporting.
Phone, email, portal, or chat. When your staff have a problem, they should reach a real person with the access and authority to fix it, not a call centre that logs the ticket and tells them to wait. North Star, based in Prince George, BC, provides SLA-backed IT helpdesk support for businesses across British Columbia, Alberta, and Yukon, with flat-rate pricing that does not bill you per incident.
What Is Included
Channels: Phone, Email, Portal, Chat
Submit support requests the way your team already works. We respond on the channel you used, not the one most convenient for us. Tickets opened by phone are not re-routed to email for the reply.
SLA-Backed Response Times
Standard plans target same-business-day acknowledgement on every ticket. Critical incidents, staff locked out, systems down, security alerts, are picked up in under an hour during business hours. Response time commitments are in the service agreement, not just a verbal promise.
After-Hours Coverage
Enterprise plans include 24/7 coverage with an on-call rotation staffed by North Star team members. No subcontracted overnight queue to an overseas call centre. The person who picks up after hours has access to your environment and the authority to act.
Monthly Reporting
Ticket counts, average resolution times, recurring issues, and recommendations. You see what is actually breaking and why, so you can decide whether a recurring issue warrants a permanent fix rather than repeated helpdesk calls.
First-Touch Resolution
Most standard support issues close on the first interaction. We track first-touch resolution rates and review anything that required more than two interactions, because that is usually a sign of either a process problem or an infrastructure issue worth addressing.
How It Works
Step 1, Submit
Open a ticket your way: phone, email, portal, or chat. We pick it up and confirm acknowledgement within the SLA window.
Step 2, Triage
Classified, prioritised, and assigned. Critical issues escalated immediately. Routine issues queued and worked in priority order. You know where your ticket stands.
Step 3, Resolve
Most issues closed on first touch. Complex issues get a clear status update and an ETA. You are not left wondering whether anyone is working on it.
Step 4, Report
Monthly summary: ticket volume, resolution times, recurring issues, and any infrastructure recommendations that emerged from the period's ticket data.
Who This Is For
- BC, Alberta, or Yukon businesses with 5 - 200 staff that need reliable IT support without the cost and risk of hiring in-house helpdesk staff
- Organisations currently using break-fix IT support and spending more than expected because every incident is billed hourly
- Businesses with after-hours operations or remote staff who need support outside standard business hours
- Companies whose current helpdesk tickets are escalating in circles without resolution and who want predictable response times backed by an SLA
What buyers ask before they sign
What counts as a critical incident for the one-hour SLA?
Critical incidents are those that affect business operations significantly: staff unable to log in, a server or cloud service down, a security alert or suspected breach, or a payment system failure. The definition is documented in the service agreement so there is no ambiguity.
What is the difference between the standard and enterprise plans?
Standard plans cover business-hours helpdesk with same-day acknowledgement SLAs. Enterprise plans add 24/7 coverage with on-call rotation and faster critical response SLAs. Both are flat-rate per user or device.
Do you support remote staff?
Yes. Support is delivered remotely for the vast majority of issues. On-site support for Prince George and Northern BC locations is available as needed. Remote BC, Alberta, and Yukon locations receive remote support.
What about hardware issues that require physical intervention?
For Prince George and surrounding Northern BC locations, North Star provides on-site support when remote resolution is not possible. For remote locations, we coordinate with local technicians or ship replacement hardware where applicable.
How does flat-rate pricing work?
Monthly flat fee based on user or device count. No per-ticket billing, no hourly charges for helpdesk calls, no billing surprises at month end. You know the cost before the month starts.
What if our volume is very low one month?
Flat-rate pricing works in both directions. Low-volume months cost the same as high-volume months, but high-volume months do not result in a billing spike either. The predictability is the point.
Why North Star
North Star is a Prince George-based MSP serving Northern BC, BC, Alberta, and Yukon. Our helpdesk is staffed by the same team that manages your infrastructure and security, not a separate tier of support staff with no access to your environment. Flat-rate pricing. Real people. SLA-backed response times that are in writing.
Get a Quote on Managed Helpdesk
Tell us your user count and current support setup. We will come back with a flat-rate proposal within two business days.
Call 672-983-1174 or book a free assessment online.
Get a quote on 24/7 helpdesk.
Tell us a bit about your environment and we'll come back with a scoped proposal in two business days. No obligation, no pressure.
Request a Quote Back to Managed ServicesA helpdesk that closes tickets, not just opens them.
Most small and mid-sized businesses in BC and Alberta deal with IT support that either takes days to respond or routes problems through a chain of escalations that never quite land. An IT helpdesk is the first line of response when something breaks: a password that won't reset, a printer that went offline, a laptop that won't connect to the VPN, a Microsoft 365 mailbox that stopped syncing. The point is to resolve those problems quickly so your staff can get back to work.
North Star runs a helpdesk where the person who picks up the ticket also has the access and authority to fix it. We're not a call-screening service that logs your issue and passes it to someone else. When a Prince George contractor with 15 field staff submits a ticket because their job-site tablets can't reach the company file server, we connect remotely, diagnose the cause, and either fix it immediately or schedule an on-site visit with a clear ETA. Every ticket gets a resolution note you can reference later. Recurring issues get flagged in the monthly report so you can see patterns instead of just symptoms.
Helpdesk deliverables, written down.
- Multi-channel submission: phone, email, web portal, or Microsoft Teams chat. We respond on the same channel you used.
- Same-business-day acknowledgement: every ticket confirmed within one business day; critical incidents within one hour during business hours.
- Remote desktop support: we connect to Windows and macOS devices via managed remote access tools without requiring you to install anything ad hoc.
- Microsoft 365 administration: password resets, mailbox issues, Teams configuration, license adds and removes, SharePoint access.
- Network and VPN troubleshooting: connectivity issues, VPN client config, firewall rules for new software.
- Device triage and escalation: if a device needs a hardware repair or replacement, we document the fault, initiate warranty claims, and arrange a loaner where available.
- After-hours on-call (Enterprise plans): 24/7 on-call rotation with documented escalation. We don't subcontract overnight queues to overseas vendors.
- Monthly summary report: ticket volume, average resolution time, recurring issues, and recommendations for reducing future ticket load.
SMBs that need a real IT team, not a phone tree.
The typical North Star helpdesk client has between 8 and 80 staff and no dedicated in-house IT person. They might be an oilfield services company in Fort St. John managing field crews with laptops and tablets, a professional services firm in Kelowna with remote staff on Microsoft 365, a retail chain in Prince George with multiple locations sharing a central server, or a forestry contractor in the Yukon running scheduling software that their MSP has never seen before.
What these businesses share is that IT problems cost them real money per hour of downtime. A staff member who can't log in is either idle or working around the problem in a way that creates a security risk. They need a helpdesk that picks up quickly, understands their environment, and has the authority to fix things without six levels of approval. That is the model North Star uses.
If your current IT support is break-fix (you call when something breaks and pay per visit), you are almost certainly paying more per incident than a flat-rate managed helpdesk plan costs per month, and you are absorbing all the risk of unplanned downtime. If you have a part-time internal IT person but they are overwhelmed or unavailable, North Star can augment or fully take over the helpdesk function.
Flat-rate pricing, not per-ticket billing.
North Star prices helpdesk on a per-user, per-month basis bundled into a managed IT services plan. The rate depends on the number of users, the complexity of your environment (on-premises servers add cost), and the coverage level (business hours vs. 24/7 on-call). You get a fixed monthly invoice with no surprise charges for routine tickets. Out-of-scope work (major projects, hardware procurement, new office buildouts) is scoped separately. Contact us for a quote specific to your headcount and environment.
What most clients ask before signing up.
How fast will you actually respond?
Standard plans target same-business-day acknowledgement on every ticket. Critical incidents, where a primary system is down and multiple staff are affected, get a response within one hour during business hours. After-hours critical response is available on Enterprise plans with a documented on-call rotation. You will always be told what priority we assigned your ticket and why.
Do you support Macs and Windows?
Yes. We support Windows 10 and 11, macOS Ventura and Sonoma, and mixed environments. We use Microsoft Intune for device management on both platforms. If you are running Linux desktops for specific workloads, contact us to discuss scope. Most SMB environments are Windows-primary with some Macs in the mix, and that is our wheelhouse.
What if I have a line-of-business application we use?
We document your software stack during onboarding. For off-the-shelf applications we support the operating system and connectivity layer. For vendor-supported applications, we coordinate with your software vendor on your behalf. We do not support custom software at the helpdesk tier, but we can scope that separately as a managed application support agreement.
Can you handle after-hours emergencies?
Enterprise plans include 24/7 on-call coverage with a documented escalation path. Business hours plans include a clear procedure for submitting critical tickets outside of hours, with a committed response at the start of the next business day. We are transparent about what "24/7" actually means versus what is on-call escalation, so you can choose the coverage level that matches your risk tolerance.
How do I know what's being worked on?
Every ticket has a status you can check in the portal. Every month you receive a summary report: total tickets, average resolution time, tickets by category, recurring issues, and our recommendations. If a pattern indicates something systemic (for example, repeated VPN failures that trace back to a router firmware issue), we will call it out and recommend a permanent fix rather than continuing to patch it monthly.
Prince George-based. BC, AB, and Yukon coverage.
North Star is headquartered in Prince George, BC, and serves businesses across British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon. We understand the realities of running IT in regions with inconsistent connectivity, long distances to the nearest IT supplier, and industries like forestry, oilfield services, construction, and mining that don't fit the standard MSP playbook. We use AI-assisted tools to increase our response speed and documentation quality, but every ticket is handled by a human technician. We give you plain-language explanations, not vendor acronym soup, and we report honestly on what we can and cannot do within the scope of your plan.