To Outsource Your Help Desk Or Not?

Web based help desk

For most business services, it may make financial sense to outsource help desk responsibilities to a company whose core competency is both customer service and tech support. The help desk industry has evolved to offer web based help desk services around the clock to support your clients or employees as needed.

In addition to staffing up to support potential help desk calls, the help desk tools for issue tracking and call routing can add a significant financial cost to a businesses support strategy. When you outsource help desk capabilities you benefit from the economy of scale and can use their employees on an as needed basis.

To outsource help desk jobs, you will have to look at various criteria to select the best solution for your business. You may have various service level agreements with clients or the requirement to support mission critical applications for employees. With an outsource help desk model, you have access to a 24x7x365 support team. Your research should look at availability, training, cross support and reliability.

Since help desk jobs can fall into entry level positions, you will have to insure that you can provide proper documentation and training when you outsource help desk duties. Any potential service provider should be able to take your training materials and develop ongoing education to insure quality assistance to your end users.

The outsourced provider should also be able to offer a certain number of employees or employee hours that are dedicated to your customers or employees. When you create an in house support center, you are subject to scheduling and turnover rates that your provider can help mitigate through agreed contracts and staffing solutions.

Besides the human element, one of the biggest barriers to an in house help desk is the software and infrastructure required to support phone call and issue triage and follow up. When you outsource help desk services, your provider supplies the systems and reporting to maintain appropriate issue tracking, reporting and follow up capabilities.

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