Help Desk Managed services is a managed IT service where you outsource your business’s IT help desk function. Doing so frees up your IT professionals so they can focus on more strategic technology goals for your business. The outsourced managed help desk ensures that your employees and customers continue to get the day-to-day IT support they need.
A managed service help desk is one of the many managed IT services that can be provided by a managed service provider (MSP) at a fixed monthly cost for a predetermined amount of support hours. Additionally, managed help desk providers can also provide software that allows the company to perform their internal help desk operations better. This offering can be combined with having the third party handle the help desk requests or sold separately as a software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Managed core IT help desk services
The IT Help Desk is generally the first point of contact for employees and customers to get help resolving their IT issues. Here are some problems that are typically resolved by the IT help desk services provided by a managed help desk provider:
- Issues with login or password resets
- Scheduled maintenance updates
- Problems with the network or VPN
- General employee inquiries
- Bugs in company software
- New feature requests
In addition to these routine activities, the IT service desk has three core responsibilities:
Incident management: The IT service desk owns the incident management process and is responsible for resolving IT-related incidents according to service-level agreements to restore services as quickly as possible. This is essential for getting systems back online and employees back to work and contributing to overall employee productivity.
Request fulfillment: This encompasses ensuring that employee and customer requests for services and access are processed promptly. For example, new employees may require specific applications installed on their devices to do their job effectively. To get that software installed, they need to make a request with the service desk and have that installed on time.
Mass communications: The third role of the service desk is to act as a single point of contact between the business and its stakeholders for all communications related to IT. A typical example of this would be notifying users proactively of existing or imminent service outages that may affect their productivity. Users must be aware of these potential outages in advance to plan their work activities accordingly. It’s also vital to prevent people from calling in, asking questions, flooding the Help Desk support lines, and preventing the technicians from being able to help people with legitimate issues.
IT help desk services for your business
Investing in good IT help desk services is essential for a business owner. A considerable amount of work is done on laptops and handheld devices. An unexpected technical issue for any of your employees can prevent them from working, resulting in lost productivity. IT help desk for business is about ensuring that your employees get the help they need when experiencing IT-related issues to get back to work. Here are some of the most common services your business will need:
- Troubleshooting: Helping customers diagnose what started a problem and how to fix the issue.
- Request fulfillment: This involves actioning customer and employee requests for different services and access to applications.
- General employee inquiries: The help desk must answer employee/customer questions about how to perform specific actions and provide information on IT-related activities.
- Account management: The help desk helps users resolve issues with their accounts, such as resetting passwords, unlocking accounts, ensuring the correct level of access based on roles etc.
- VPN Support: The help desk is usually responsible for helping internal employees/contractors connect to the internal VPN.
In particular, the IT help desk for small businesses can be challenging to implement. Many companies find it best to outsource this function of their business.
What are the differences between the help desk and the service desk?
These terms are used interchangeably, but a fine distinction must be made. Firstly, we should understand that the help desk is a subset of the service desk.
- The help desk is focused on break-fix or incident management. This means resolving user issues as they occur and getting them back to work asap.
- The service desk is not limited to just helping with break-fix but also with things like service requests (requests for new services or applications) and information requests (questions like “how do I do X?).
It’s important to understand this distinction to know what you are looking for and ask the right questions if you want to outsource your internal operations.
Managed Help Desk services from CG Technologies
IT Helpdesk services are a vital function in modern-day business. Even if you are a small to medium-sized business (SMB), your business still relies on IT to function efficiently. Managed Helpdesk services from CG Technologies remove the overhead from your company.
Our managed IT help desk support services are staffed 24 × 7 × 365 with Canadian-based technology and service experts who can assist with any IT-related issue. We provide our customers with an easily accessible and available source of help to ensure that their IT issues get addressed quickly, allowing their business to continue to operate. Contact us to learn more.
