Outsourcing Your IT Helpdesk

INK Networks – IT Helpdesk – Outsourced Helpdesk

Outsourcing your IT Helpdesk technical support is one of the most widely used forms of outsourcing. However, any business looking to outsource IT help desk services needs to understand outsourcing goals.

While outsourcing IT is often discussed in financial terms, the impact of help desk outsourcing is much broader than that. When used as internal support, it can have an impact on the management of service tickets. As a customer service resource, an outsourced help desk can be a key driver of customer satisfaction and retention. In short, the potential impact of an outsourced help desk, for better or for worse, is so broad that careful goal-setting and selection can be vital to a company’s success.

The following are some pros that have emerged in connection with help desk outsourcing:

Pros

• Financial leverage: Outsourcing IT reduces fixed costs and thus can boost a substantial return-on-investment.
• Focus on core competencies: Outsourcing your IT Helpdesk frees up management to spend more time on what they do best, in areas where the company is best positioned to add value.
• Flexible capacity: In any business, IT Helpdesk call volume can vary greatly for seasonal and other reasons. Outsourcing your IT creates flexible capacity for handling these changes in volume.
• Continually updated training: Managed Service Firms that specialize in help desk services are well positioned to keep engineer training current.

What to consider when planning a successful help desk program:

1. Identify the essential mission: A help desk should have one of three fundamental missions: to provide internal technology support; to provide support for business-to-business users; or to provide support for consumers. Each constituency should be approached differently and it may not be wise to combine these service efforts.
2. Set measurable goals: This can start with financial goals such as return-on-investment, but it should also include carefully thought out service goals. These might include call pickup response time, average length of a help desk service call, percentage of situations resolved on the first telephone call, staff retention, and end customer/end user satisfaction.
3. Define the help desk: The mission and goals define the broader mission and specifi goals of a help desk program. These should then help you find the benefits of outsourcing to INK Networks. Different firms may offer different emphasis on internal, business-to-business, or consumer support, and past performance on relevant metrics can form a useful basis for comparing different firms.

The potential benefits of help desk outsourcing are as attractive as ever, and with a systematic approach that recognizes and deals with potential negatives, those benefits can be realized.