Tickets that
actually get closed.
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.
Everything you need, none of the upsell.
Real deliverables, with the boundaries written down. So you know what you're paying for and what counts as extra.
Phone, email, portal, chat.
Submit how your team already works. We respond on whichever channel you opened the ticket on, not the one that's convenient for us.
Same-business-day response.
Standard plans target same-business-day acknowledgement on every ticket, with critical incidents picked up in under an hour during business hours.
After-hours and weekend.
Enterprise plans add 24/7 coverage with on-call rotation. We don't subcontract overnight queues to overseas vendors.
Monthly summary.
Ticket counts, average resolution times, recurring issues, and recommendations. So you can see what's actually breaking and why.
The order we work in.
A clear sequence so you can budget time, money, and risk against the work.
Submit.
Open a ticket your way: phone, email, portal, or chat. We pick it up and confirm.
Triage.
We classify, prioritize, and assign. Critical gets escalated immediately. Routine gets queued and worked.
Resolve.
Most issues close on first touch. The rest get a clear status update and an ETA.
Report.
Every month you get a summary of what came in, what we fixed, and what we'd recommend changing to reduce future tickets.
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.