Four Reasons Outsourced Help Desk Support Just Makes Sense

Help desk support is critical for any company. A help desk offers the first point of contact for employees and customers struggling with the tools you use or sell. Whether it’s an on-premises employee printer troubleshooting or a question about a feature upgrade for your customer-facing product, a help desk is there to get the call.

The problem? A help desk is a massive headache. Staffing, training and benchmarking analytics are just some of the constant struggles of a help desk manager. The complications are exponential when you throw in a 24/7/365 support service. It doesn’t help that the average trouble ticket volume has increased by 16% since the pandemic. Add to that the skilled labor shortage and the potential for burnout, and you have a perfect storm of problems for your support teams.

But what about outsourcing your help desk support team? What impact could an outsourced help desk support service have on your business? Here’s what you need to know.

Top Four Reasons for Outsourcing Your Help Desk Support

Reason #1: Your current IT or help desk teams are burning out.

Most current help desk staff these days report unsustainable levels of stress and burnout. Since COVID, the volume of help desk support has risen in correlation to the rise of the remote distributed workforce. All this pressure comes with a cost, as most help desk leaders cite hiring and retention challenges. Within the context of the high costs of staffing and turnover, outsourced help desk support makes sense.

Outsourcing a help desk team can help with employee burnout by:

• Reducing the workload of your current IT staff.
• Focusing more on core responsibilities as you shift tech teams away from trouble tickets to core business functions.
• Improving work/life balance of your internal teams.
• Increasing access to specialized technical skills that you don’t currently have in-house.

Reason #2: You want to cut costs on end-user support while increasing the productivity of your internal teams.

Outsourced help desk support is worth the investment when you consider the potential for cost savings. As a general rule, most organizations understand the benefits of outsourcing to include significant cost savings. In the case of an outsourced IT help desk, you can expect the cost savings to include:

• Reduced downtime for end-users, whether they are employees or customers.
• Improved productivity for employees receiving help desk support and any tech staff you reassign from their help desk role. (Your human resource team will also thank you.) Most customer service teams (91%) confirm that an outsourced help desk makes a significantly positive impact in their productivity.
• Reduced hiring costs by eliminating the overhead for help desk hiring.
• Increased proactive maintenance of your IT systems, as an outsourced help desk can resolve potential issues before they cause a problem.
• Happier customers, whether they are internal or external. Help desk end-users report an average satisfaction rate of around 83%.
• Reduced wait times, which can significantly impact the customer’s or end-users positive perception of your business.

Reason #3: You need access to specialized skill sets and better customer management.

An outsourced help desk offers a broader range of specialized technical expertise than may be available in-house. Outsourced help desk staff are trained and certified in specialized areas, such as cybersecurity, specific software modules or network engineering. This training constantly updates even as technology shifts and evolves.

These turnkey help desk resources also come with specially designed software for tracking trouble tickets, making for a more efficient resolution process. Finally, outsourced help desk teams receive extensive customer service training in best practices for troubleshooting and resolving complex problems. Each help desk team member undergoes regular and extensive performance monitoring.

Reason #4: You need the scalability of a 24/7 help desk operation.

An outsourced help desk can scale up or down as needed. This scalability allows organizations to adjust resources based on changing demands without needing to invest in additional staff or architectural resources.

Some of the benefits of an outsourced help desk from a scalability perspective includes:

• Availability: An outsourced help desk can provide round-the-clock service. Time zones don’t matter to a 24/7 help desk. This offering is the perfect answer for today’s dispersed remote workforce.
• Global coverage: Outsourced help desks handle calls at all hours of the day and night. If you have a global business, this service offers support regardless of where the end-user lives or works.
• Multilingual support: Outsourcing expands support to non-native English speakers. It’s common for these services to staff bilingual staff for better customer care.
• Faster response to changing market conditions: Organizations face changing markets, fickle customers and even environmental crises. An outsourced help desk can scale up to meet these demands quickly and efficiently without disrupting your internal IT or HR teams. This kind of scalability means you can respond faster to external threats and internal pressures that affect your end-users and customers.

Why Do You Need Red River’s Outsourced Help Desk Service?

Red River offers a proven turnkey outsourced managed help desk service. Red River’s managed help desk comes with the best tools for analytics, reporting and monitoring. Our 24/7/365 resources offer you the affordability, improved customer service and increased productivity your company deserves. Contact us when you’re ready to achieve the benefits of an outsourced help desk.

FAQ

What is a help desk?

A help desk is a centralized resource for technical end-user assistance. The resource is the same; end-users with technical problems can call, chat or email the help desk for timely, practical solutions to their hardware and software problems. A help desk is also called a support or service desk.

What are the benefits of outsourcing a help desk?

Outsourcing your help desk to a third-party vendor offers cost savings over building and maintaining your in-house team. These services are scalable and typically offer 24/7 support across time zones. An outsourced help desk provides specialized expertise and can significantly improve your service quality for IT-related trouble tickets. Outsourcing this resource for your clients or employees also frees up your internal tech teams to focus on mission-critical initiatives.