Customers need tech support regardless of how advanced a company's technologies may be. Networks crash, bugs multiply rapidly, and even the high quality products sometimes malfunction - at such times, a help desk becomes essential.
Verified Market Research estimates that outsourcing help desk support will become a massive industry by 2028; market estimates put online help desk software market value at nearly $20 Million from $8.9 Million today.
Help desks are departments or teams designed to assist employees or clients with technical support issues, but finding an ideal partner and setting yourself up for success may prove challenging. In this blog post, we explore the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing the IT helpdesk, including when this critical decision may make sense for your company.
Should Your Company Outsource its Help Desk??
Did you know that 66% of US businesses outsource at least one department? Why, then, do businesses contract out their IT support desk?
Customer support tickets that arrive can often exceed an internal IT department's capacity to manage. Offering IT assistance may divert focus away from core corporate goals or services provided by your business.
Outsourcing services offer businesses a practical, scalable advanced solution without overwhelming internal teams. Businesses benefit from working with professionals with technical expertise in customer experience (CX) management and IT support - professionals allowing for quick scaling up/down without hiring, training, or paying salaries in-house staff for support teams.
When Should You Consider Outsourcing Your IT Help Desk?
Many companies outsource their help desk services because the in-house support staff cannot keep up with support ticket volume. However, there may also be several red flags that suggest it might be time to outsource the IT helpdesk.
Are You Experiencing Currently-
- A backlog of assistance tickets?
- Are rising expenses for agents and IT support causing alarming increases in expenses?
- Are consumers becoming dissatisfied with how sound products or services function?
- Is scaling support up and down tricky due to the seasonality of support requests?
- What budgetary expansion needs do other domains require?
- Are resources and training lacking within your IT department?
- Are You Confused and Overwhelmed About CX Services?
Signs that it might be time to hire an experienced team and customer experience partner may include IT staff being overburdened and customer satisfaction (CSAT) declining or simply that your business would like an external party to handle customer support tickets instead of using internal resources directly.
Advantages Of Outsourcing Help Desk Solutions
Now that the outsourcing help desk support team has entered your mind, what advantages can you expect to reap? Assume for now that you have found an ideal partner who satisfies these criteria and more - one who effectively represents your brand while offering top-tier customer service - and shows no warning signs from the previous section - and you should start reaping some significant advantages of help desk support provider for business expansion, financial performance, and brand enhancement. Here are a few key ways hiring external help desk support teams can boost business expansion, financial performance, and brand enhancement!
Lower Your Expenses
It might seem reasonable that managing IT support yourself would help lower expenses; sometimes this may even be true, but often outsourcing is a far more reliable and cost-efficient solution.
Consider the expenses related to maintaining an IT support department:
- Hiring and training employees
- Cost Benefits and salaries represent one of the primary expenses for any organization.
- Devices and Technology
- Hiring Workspace
- Establish a Database
Your outsourcing partners take care of cost reduction expenses with cost-cutting strategies like nearshoring or offshoring that help control direct cost savings while accommodating scaling up or down as necessary, as well as hiring, training, and managing employees more cost-effectively than you could on your own.
Improved Scalability And Availability
Your customer service department could benefit significantly from outsourcing in terms of expanding operating hours and seasonality adjustments. By working with an outsourcing provider, agents will always be ready to assist customers 24/7 - including weekends! Your help desk will solely focus on servicing its customer base for maximum level of service and customer satisfaction levels.
Outsourcing allows flexible scaling in response to seasonal demands as well. An outsourced provider makes it simple and fast to add more agents if customer demand surges, even though most businesses only pay for a predetermined number of service hours each month. If seasonal demands arise, modify your Service Level Agreement and outsourcing agreement.
Enhance Productivity & Operational Efficiency
Evidence indicates that outsourcing call resolution work increases call resolution rates, service standards, and administrative procedures. Outsourced teams tend to be much more productive and cost-efficient than teams responsible for multiple duties, as they focus solely on call resolution for customer inquiries.
And when your staff can focus on doing what's most essential for the business instead of ticket management and customer support, their productivity may increase drastically. Your internal teams could save time by outsourcing complex tasks like IT help desk support that aren't core competencies.
Increase Client Satisfaction.
Increases in customer satisfaction are among the primary advantages of outsourcing help desk operations. When calling with technical issues, customers seek answers promptly and effectively addressed - not more calls coming into an in-house operations help desk than necessary!
Proactive support and highly trained personnel are vital in expediting resolution times when using outsourced managed IT services.
An exceptional CX partner should act like an extension of your staff at a lower operational cost and with more excellent training capabilities than could be obtained within. An ideal outsourced CX provider must show they can increase overall CSAT ratings, first call resolution rates, response times, and answer speed rates to reach desired customer service metrics.
Increase Worker Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction increases dramatically when help desks are outsourced - whether this means outsourcing other support services or the internal help desk itself.
According to a report, 91% of workers believe having a help desk increases productivity. Help desks can assist your staff members with daily tasks and increase satisfaction levels about output and goals. Whether in-house team or outsourced, help desks offer tremendous assistance crucial for success in today's workplaces.
Related Article- Hire the Best 24-hour Help Desk Services Available
Provides A Molecular Advantage
Outsourced help desk services give businesses an essential competitive edge; many of the world's most successful multinational corporations contract out their IT support for this primary reason alone. You can focus on growing your primary business owner while outsourcing all technical details taken care of professionally by expert customer experience technicians.
Today's business environment requires businesses to satisfy customer expectations more than ever for success. Take a look at these numbers:
- Sixty percent of consumers indicate that choosing a company based on how quickly their inquiries are addressed is extremely important.
- 57% of consumers cite exceptional customer service as their primary motivation for staying loyal to a particular brand, placing less importance on products or services than customer service.
- Studies suggest that approximately half of consumers report moving to another vendor after even one negative encounter with them.
- When faced with multiple negative experiences at one company, eight out of ten consumers say they would switch to their competitors.
An excellent customer service team strategy is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage and winning new clients. Client retention depends heavily upon how supportive their interactions with you are.
Help Build Knowledge About Organisations
Numerous benefits of application development can be integrated with automated help desks for employee convenience, and employees can quickly locate the information they require via bots without opening individual software programs. Customer relationship management (CRM), efficient project management software, and e-commerce platforms can all be accessed using chatbots within seconds, quickly providing employees with accurate details!
Using an outsourced tech solution simplifies help desk management. Contractor-hired service desk technicians are able to quickly identify issues, provide pertinent fixes promptly, and communicate with staff with ease. This allows employees to get back to work as soon as possible while causing the least amount of disturbance to business operations. Customer support services are essential for reducing cyberthreats and giving customers a great experience.
How To Effectively Outsource Your Help Desk
Planning is critical when choosing the appropriate potential outsourcing partner, and these five essential elements will ensure success to maximize help desk outsourcing efforts-
1. Determine Objectives
Make sure you know exactly what you expect from an external help desk provider. Are they made with the intention of making customers happier? Boost sales volume and ticket availability? or put better CX technology into practice?
Only you know why you require a potential outsourcing team. Get help from internal employees to determine their requirements and establish goals that your help desk must achieve.
Make sure you know exactly what you expect from an external help desk provider. Are they made with the intention of making customers happier? Boost sales volume and ticket availability? or put better CX technology into practice?
2. Determine Your Budget And Scope
Once goals have been defined, the next step should be defining your project scope. Which support tiers or levels do you intend to outsource, whether for internal use only or having your vendor handle Help Desk operations directly?
Also, it would be best to thoroughly understand ticket volume, operating hours, and help desk metrics such as call abandonment rate, first call resolution (FCR), and average speed to answer (ASA). Discuss this scope, your budget, and expectations with any prospective vendors you might use and ensure they can deliver what is promised.
3. Choose A Location Strategy That Works
Contact centers and outsourced call centers frequently employ various staffing strategies; here are a few available for careful selection:
1 Onshore
Your headquarters and contact center operations should preferably be located within the same nation or region of contact center offices. Although often more costly, this approach provides maximum internal control, flexibility, and lines of communication.
2 Nearshore
Nearshoring involves setting up contact center offices in another nation nearby that shares borders and similarities like language and culture with your clientele yet is close enough for more cost-efficient labor to be obtained without losing some linguistic, cultural, and educational affinities essential for client relations.
3 Offshore
Companies often find offshore contact centers the most cost-effective solution due to agents in low-cost countries and flexible time zone travel requirements. However, offshore options may require additional work due to different communication standards between agents in various locations and language obstacles that necessitate cross-cultural training sessions and costly time zone travel costs.
Contact your vendors about available options, then evaluate which option best meets your financial and core business functions requirements.
4. Search For Work Experience
Employ an external partner who understands what matters to you most and has experience in your industry or sector. Check references from businesses performing similar work; ask about performance at sectors/companions/companies like yours.
Evaluation is vital when searching for potential suppliers to convey your brand message accurately. How much emphasis do they place on brand alignment, understanding what matters to you, and their knowledge base and training materials, showing their dedication towards brand focus?
5. Evaluate Cx Results And Potential Vendors
Successful help desk operations begin with superior customer experience network management. Before selecting vendors to supply help for your help desk needs, research what their CX outcomes have been with other businesses - review case studies, use cases, and white papers published by them as the output of this process - and make sure their customer interactions results exceed those of competitors!.
Conclusion
An exceptional BPO provider will deliver you the ideal internal help desk by using cutting-edge technologies, offering support across various channels, hiring skilled personnel from various backgrounds, and employing automation and streamlining processes to enhance cost efficiency. Reputable firms focus on prioritizing staff member experiences as customers would. Investment in an internal service desk system is necessary if your goal is expanding your competitive business landscape or keeping outstanding talent on board.
Employees receive IT support and daily difficult task assistance from internal help desk management, helping them complete allotted responsibilities, achieve business goals, and maintain an acceptable work-life balance. If workers experience device problems, they can contact internal support staff directly for help. Get the cost advantage of specialized expertise combined with substantial cost savings. Every business requires risk mitigation and potential risk management.
