An IT service desk is a department that assists customers with incident resolution or service management requests that is staffed and managed in-house. A service desk outsourcing company provides a third-party service specializing in customer support and service. Service desk outsourcing companies troubleshoot customer IT problems, typically offering 24/7 customer service and guaranteeing high-quality service levels to their clients. IT Help desk outsourcing has been around for a long time, and many smaller companies prefer this approach to reduce the overhead of staffing an internal department.
This article will discuss some of the benefits of help desk outsourcing services and what features/benefits you should expect from help desk outsourcing companies.
Service desk outsourcing company features
If you are considering engaging with a service desk outsourcing company, here are some of the standard features you should look for:
- 24/7 availability: Most service desk outsourcing companies support 24/7 customer service. This is a great option that most companies would not be able to offer with internal staff.
- Hired expertise: You have access to highly skilled experts with different IT disciplines available to support you without the training overhead.
- Tracking and analytics: monthly/quarterly reports and analytics on the average time to resolution, type of incidents reported, customer satisfaction, and more so that you can quantify and measure the performance and effectiveness of the service desk company.
- Multi-channel help desk support: Most service desk companies will offer web-based access, 24-hour call centres, self-serve options, live chats and automated customer service bots as communication channels.
An outsourced service desk features many capabilities that provide a quality customer service experience for you and your users.
What are the benefits of IT help desk outsourcing?
Now that we’ve discussed the features of IT help desk outsourcing, let’s discuss how these translate into potential benefits for your business:
- Faster onboarding: It is quicker and more cost-effective to hire an IT helpdesk support outsourcing company than to recruit, train and build a team organically.
- Effortless scalability: It is easier to scale your services up and down using an outsourcing company than to do so internally. It is also easier to respond to service changes as and when needed.
- Better reporting and analytics: Outsourced service desk companies offer detailed reporting and analytics around their performance for their clients. These are important for understanding what IT issues your staff are having and ensuring you get the expected response times from the contracted outsourced service desk company.
- Faster response time: IT outsourcing companies are specialists in their field; they provide service response times based on the service level agreement (SLA) signed during procurement.
- Reduce operating costs: It is cheaper to outsource IT operations than keep them in-house. There are many aspects to IT, and staffing to meet this is expensive, and many smaller companies do not have the budgets for large in-house teams.
IT help desk vs. service desk, what is the difference?
The terms IT, Help Desk and IT Service Desk are often used interchangeably. While they are similar in their function, a few important distinctions should be made.
IT help desk support is primarily used for more tactical activities, usually to resolve immediate technical issues and incidents affecting stakeholders. IT help desk services focus on fixing issues as they occur.
The IT service desk often has a broader remit and focuses on being a single point of contact for service providers and their users. This can include managing incidents, fulfilling service requests and communicating with end users. The service desk’s overall goal is to improve IT processes and business efficiency by delivering a service to end users, encompassing comprehensive customer service.
Should I outsource IT help desk services?
IT help desk outsourcing is a great way to provide your users with support for their IT-related issues. In this scenario, you entrust a third party to resolve any employee or customer user technical issues as they arise. This includes providing users with multiple channels to receive support, such as via call centre, live chat, a portal for creating tickets and self-service options.
In addition to providing the service offerings, most companies also include service level agreement (SLA) guarantees around average time to resolution and uptime of help desk services. Most outsourcing IT Help Desk companies will provide 24/7 assistance to their client’s customers.
However, there can also be a downside to IT service desk outsourcing, so it is important to do plenty of research before selecting an outsourcing partner. For example, help desk staff might only have a superficial understanding of your company and its service/products, limiting their ability to provide a good customer service experience.
The outsource support staff may not be based in Canada but in a different country, so there may be data privacy and compliance issues to consider. Also, if support staff are not in-country, it’s possible that communication and understanding of problems become an issue. The decision to outsource IT help desk services should not be taken lightly.
Pick a trusted partner
Outsourced IT Help Desk services can deliver the benefits of cost savings, faster response times, access to subject matter expertise, scalability and better analytics and reporting. CG Technologies has a 25-year track record delivering high-quality and cost-effective outsourced help desk services to 100’s of customers of all sizes in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
Whether it’s supporting your employees with break-fix issues, connectivity problems, or password resets, our helpdesk is available 24 x 7 x 365 days a year and is staffed with engineers based in Canada. You will immediately see improved support services to your employees, increased employee satisfaction, and at the same time, provide service reliability, controlled IT costs and lower your technology frustration level. Contact us to learn more.
