Outsourcing help desk support is a massive industry. According to Verified Market Research, the online help desk software market hit $8.9 million in 2020 and is projected to climb to almost $20 million by 2028.

Why?

No matter how advanced a company’s technology, customers will always need tech support. Bugs invade, networks fail, and even the best products occasionally break. And when that happens, you need a help desk.

The help desk is the team or department whose sole purpose is to help employees or customers solve their technical support issues. But finding the right partner – and ensuring you’re set up for success – can be a bit more challenging.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks of IT Help Desk outsourcing and how to know when it’s right for your company.

Is Outsourcing Your Help Desk Right For Your Company?

Did you know that 66% of U.S. businesses outsource at least one department? So, why do companies outsource their IT help desk?

Often, the amount of support tickets coming in from customers is too much for an internal IT department to handle. Helping customers with IT support can also be a distraction from your company’s core focus, products, or services.

Outsourcing services provide a scalable solution without taxing your internal teams. Companies get the benefit of experts who are skilled in both IT support and customer experience (CX) management. With outsourced support teams, you can scale up and down without having to recruit, train, and pay salaries in-house.

So when should you consider outsourcing help desks or service desks, and when is it a bad idea? Let’s explore those two questions.

When Should You Consider IT Help Desk Outsourcing?

The top reason that drives most companies to outsource their help desk is that they’re getting more support tickets than their internal team can handle. But you may be noticing several tell-tale signs that it might be time to consider outsourcing your IT help desk.

Are you experiencing:

• A backlog of support tickets?
• Increasing costs for IT support and agents?
• Decreasing customer satisfaction around the functionality of products or services?
• Seasonality in support requests that makes it challenging to scale support up or down?
• Budgetary needs for growth in other areas?
• A gap in training and resources in the IT department?
• Lack of CX knowledge and expertise?

All of these can be signs that it’s time to hire an experienced help desk and CX partner. Maybe it’s a drop in customer satisfaction (CSAT) or a squeeze on your IT team. Maybe it’s simply that your company doesn’t want to keep investing internal resources in customer support tickets.

Whatever it is, an outsourced CX solution may be the way to go.

When Is Outsourcing Your IT Help Desk a Bad Idea?

On the other hand, outsourcing may not always solve your problems – and outsourcing any department brings inherent risk.

After all, it’s hard to trust that anyone else cares as much about your customers as you do. How can you be sure your CX partner will approach customers with the same expectations of excellence as you do?

Here are some red flags when it comes to IT help desk outsourcing and when to know if it’s going to hurt more than help.

• The outsourcing partner doesn’t show a strong grasp of your company culture, values, and brand voice.
• The outsourcing partner doesn’t seem to have in-depth IT experience or a track record in your particular industry.
• The outsourcing solution doesn’t have flexibility or can’t customize its services in the way that you need.
• You don’t see strong CSAT results from the outsourcing company or don’t feel confident that their agents have a high EQ and standard of excellence.
• The outsourcing partner has an offshore team that isn’t successfully resonating with your customer base.
• The outsourcing partner doesn’t offer high transparency or insight into decision-making. You feel you may lose too much control over your technology.

Any of these – and many more – concerns should be strongly considered as you look for a help desk solution. These risks can further decrease your CSAT and hurt your brand reputation in the long run.

Benefits of Outsourcing Your Help Desk?

So, if you’re starting to think about outsourcing help desk support, what kinds of benefits can you expect? Let’s assume that you’ve found a partner who passes the test, represents your brand well, provides excellent service, and more. In short, a partner who doesn’t exhibit any of the red flags we discussed in the section above.

Here are some of the primary ways that outsourcing help desk support can add value to your brand, your bottom line, and your company’s growth.

Reduced Costs

You might think that doing IT support in-house would allow you to control costs better, and sometimes that’s true. But often, outsourcing is a far more affordable – and predictable – strategy.

Think about the costs associated with running an IT support department:

• Staff recruitment and training
• Salaries and benefits – the largest expense for any company
• Equipment and technology
• Leasing office space
• Developing a knowledge base
• Etc.

Outsourcing partners cover all of those costs for you and offer their services at a flat or customizable fee. Often, help desk outsourcing companies have cost-saving strategies in place, like offshoring or nearshoring. They can hire, train, and manage staff at a smaller cost and help you with scaling up or down as needed.

Improved Availability & Scalability

Outsourcing customer service in any department can increase your hours of availability and make scaling for seasonality that much easier.

With an outsourcing partner, you can ensure that you have agents available for customers at any hours you need, including 24/7 service. Your help desk will be focused solely on its role of serving customers, which proves to increase service levels and customer satisfaction.

Outsourcing also allows for nimble scaling when you have seasonal needs.

While most companies will pay for a set amount of service hours each month, an outsourced partner makes it easy to scale up with more agents if you experience a surge in customer requests.

All it takes is adjusting your service level agreement (SLA) to accommodate the new demand – rather than recruiting, hiring, and training new employees.

Improves Efficiency & Productivity

Having a dedicated outsourced team is proven to improve service levels, call resolution rates, and management processes. Because outsourced partners are focused exclusively on customer call resolution, they are far more efficient and productive than an in-house team that is pulled in several different directions.

Additionally, your employees can be far more productive when they are freed up to focus on your core business rather than deal with ticket management and customer support. Outsourcing something as nuanced as IT help desk support can relieve your internal teams of work that doesn’t serve your product or service focus.

Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Perhaps the most obvious value of an outsourced help desk is the potential boost of customer satisfaction. What are customers looking for when they call with a technical issue? Having their questions or issues resolved quickly and efficiently.

With an outsourced managed IT service, you can increase resolution time through proactive support and highly trained personnel. An experienced CX partner will feel like an extension of your own team but with more bandwidth and training than you could get internally on a similar budget.

The right outsourced partner should show that they can improve response times, speed to answer, first-call resolution, and overall CSAT.

Boost Employee Satisfaction

Whether you decide to outsource internal help desks or other support services, outsourcing your help desk has been shown to boost employee satisfaction.

In fact, an annual State of Service report from Hubspot shows that 91% of employees feel having a help desk improves their productivity.

Whether it’s in-house or outsourced, a help desk can support your employees in their own day-to-day work and increase their level of satisfaction with their productivity and goals.

Gives a Competitive Edge

Lastly, an outsourced help desk gives companies an edge over their competition. That’s why some of the most successful global companies outsource their IT support. Outsourcing allows you to focus on your core business and rest easy that experts in IT customer experience are at work for you.

In today’s economy, customer experience is becoming the true differentiator across the most competitive companies. Consider these statistics from Zendesk:

• 60% of customers say that quick inquiry resolution is a decisive factor in choosing what company to buy from.
• 57% of customers say that customer service is a top factor in their loyalty to a brand. Customer service is more important to these customers than the product or service.
• Around 50% of customers say they would switch to a competitor after just a single bad customer experience.
• 80% of customers say they would switch to a competitor after more than one bad customer experience.

Clearly, deploying an effective customer support strategy is core to driving your competitive edge. Customers are won and lost over the support they receive.

How To Successfully Outsource Your Help Desk

Finding the right outsourcing partner requires clear goals and a detailed roadmap. Here are five of the key factors to successfully outsource and see the results you want from your help desk.

1. Set goals

First of all, know exactly what you want from your outsourced help desk. Do you need to boost customer satisfaction? Increase availability or ticket volume? Deploy better CX technology?

Only you can know exactly why you’re searching for an outsourcing partner. Get buy-in from your internal team to find out what they need and define the goals you need your help desk to achieve.

Clearly communicate these goals both internally and with potential help desk vendors. Make it clear that you will be evaluating the success of the partnership based on these goals.

2. Identify scope and budget

After goals are set, it’s time to outline the project scope. What levels or tiers of support do you want to outsource? Do you want your vendor to deal with only Tier 1 Help Desk or escalate internally?

You should also get a clear understanding of your ticket volumes, hours of operation, etc. Set up close tracking of critical help desk metrics like average speed to answer (ASA), first-call resolution (FCR), and call abandonment rate.

Communicate all of this scope – and your budget – with potential vendors and ensure they can deliver on your expectations.

3. Target a location strategy

Outsourced call centers or contact centers often have different strategies for staffing locations. You should be able to choose from the following:

• Onshore: Contact center offices are located in the same country and even the same region as your HQ or CX operations. This is often the most expensive option, but it also is the easiest for communication, flexibility, and internal control.

• Nearshore: Contact center offices are located in another country but near enough that you share a border and other alignments such as language and culture. Nearshoring allows for more affordable labor without losing some of the cultural, language, and educational alignments companies want for their customers.

• Offshore: Offshore contact centers are usually the most affordable option, as companies can seek agents in countries where the cost of living is low. However, offshore options can increase the effort on your part, with different expectations around communication, language barriers, and costly travel across time zones.

You’ll want to hear out your vendors on what options they offer and consider which best suits your needs based on budget and your own company’s global footprint.

4. Look for industry experience

Look for a partner with a proven track record in your industry who understands what’s most important to you. Ask them for references from companies that do similar work to you. Ask them for results within your industry or a comparable company.

You should also evaluate if potential vendors can represent your brand voice. How important is brand alignment to them? Do they seem to grasp what’s important to you? Can they show you their training documents and knowledge base? Do those show a strong emphasis on brand focus?

5. Evaluate potential vendors’ CX outcomes

The baseline for a successful help desk is excellent customer experience management. Ask your potential vendors for their CX results with other companies. See what they’ve produced in terms of case studies, use cases, white papers, and more.

Ensure that your potential vendor has strong CX results compared to their competitors.

Finding The Right Partner

Finding the right managed help desk partner is all about defining your goals and getting a vendor who understands what you want for your customers.

They should have the following:

• A strong understanding of your company culture, values, and brand voice and an ability to translate that into customer support.
• In-depth IT experience with proven experience in your industry.
• Customized options and flexibility for your changing needs or goals.
• Strong CSAT results and agents who have strong people skills and IT expertise.
• Whether you want onshore, nearshore, or offshore options, the agents should show strong results and understand your core brand, service, and product.
• Transparency into their processes, outcomes, and decision-making. Easy and clear communication with your team.

You can learn more about how to build a roadmap to help desk success by reaching out today. At ROI CX Solutions, we are Help Desk partners for some of the world’s leading brands – with outcomes that drive customer loyalty and company growth.

No matter what industry your business is in, you’ll need to provide customers with stellar customer service when they experience an issue. This means creating a dedicated customer support or technical support team to provide those services.

Although these services may seem similar, the types of people that perform best in these roles exhibit different traits. You need to understand the difference between customer support and technical support if you want to provide the best service to your clients.

Keep reading to learn the main differences between customer support vs customer service that will help you provide the best experience every time.

1. Required Skills

The best customer support agents are creative, out-of-the-box thinkers who have stellar communication skills and are comfortable talking to just about anyone at any time. They’re patient, kind, and do everything they can to make a customer feel both heard and valued. Their primary skillset focuses on improving the customer experience and finding ways to alleviate pain points quickly.

When providing technical support to customers, technical support agents must have a strong understanding of technology and the communication skills to be able to explain complex solutions in a language that customers can easily understand. They need many of the same skills that customer support agents have, but they must also have a strong technical understanding and teaching ability to ensure customers get the help they need.

2. Availability of Service

Customer support is available to every customer who needs it. This is true whether they’re looking to complain about a product or simply have a question about an outstanding order.

Technical support is typically only available to customers who specifically request it or are identified as truly needing it. Why? To answer that, we need to answer “What do customers want from technical support?”

Most customers calling in for technical support help are experiencing issues with a product that they can’t solve on their own. They need the help of an experienced representative, not just a general customer service expert. That said, customer support agents may recommend or forward callers to the technical support division to further help the customer in question.

3. Focus or Goal of the Service

The main goal for customer service agents is to ensure that the customer is happy with the products or services provided by the company they represent. Each call focuses on creating a positive experience for the customer, even if it takes a while to find a resolution.

So what do customers want from technical support when they call in? They want clear solutions.

Technical support agents focus on resolving the customer’s problem as fast as they can. The quality of the customer service they render is less important than their ability to find the right solution for the customer’s problem. Once they identify the right solution, the technical support agent then communicates potential issues with the company to make sure technical problems get resolved once and for all.

How to Succeed in Both Roles

The key to succeeding as a customer service support representative is making sure that agents put the customer first. They need to listen to the customer’s concerns and take the time to ask questions before rendering an opinion or making a suggestion. They need to be calm even when customers are irate, and should be able to keep customers’ temperaments and reactions from influencing their moods.

To succeed as a technical support representative, agents must be able to exhibit patience and understanding when speaking to customers. But they must also be able to troubleshoot over the phone and have the communication skills to teach customers how to overcome the technical challenges they’re experiencing.

Is technical support an IT job? It can be. Some technical support agents work directly with customers, while others work with businesses. Regardless of who they’re assisting, technical support agents need to prioritize finding solutions to technical issues in each call.

Finding the Right People Can Be Tough

Finding the best candidates to take on both types of calls can be tough for business owners, even if you understand the difference between customer support and technical support roles. Instead of trying to find new team members, outsource your call center needs to ROI Solutions. Contact us for a free, no-obligation quote today.

Connecting customers to the right person can be a challenge, especially if your staff is already overwhelmed with inbound communication. Automated answering services can help you connect your customers to the right person while reducing headaches and lowering cost. And, while automated answering services are often stereotyped as creating a hassle for the customer, they can actually improve the customer experience if used correctly.

What Is an Automated Answering Service?

Automated answering services are easy and effective technology to direct callers to the right person within your company. Similar to traditional receptionists, they handle inbound and outbound calls, and can help clients reach employees working remotely or during non-working hours. Automated answering services are significantly less expensive than hiring an in-house employee, plus, they make it possible for your employees to focus on tasks more relevant to them.

Improving Efficiency

An operator or executive assistant is expensive. Even low-paid employees can end up costing more than $40k a year when benefits, training, and other necessities are taken into consideration. In contrast, automated answering services are significantly cheaper and represent significant cost savings.

Even if you do not have an employee who is dedicated to directing calls and call management, an automated answering service creates efficiency by allowing your team to focus on what they do best. Unknown calls that could be for any purpose including basic information, customer support, or even an unwanted sales call from a telemarketer slow down your team and distract them from their core competency.

With an automated answering service, your employees can take calls that already provide basic information such as why a person is calling and what they are hoping to accomplish. This allows them to use their time on the phone more efficiently and frees up space in their schedule for other tasks.

Positive Customer Experience

Automated answering services can potentially create a better customer experience than a live operator when used correctly. For one thing, they reduce dreaded wait times. Nothing is more frustrating than being put on hold and the need to do this can be significantly reduced with an automated answering service.

Additionally, being connected with the right person the first time a customer calls creates a sense of competence. Multiple phone transfers creates the sense that your company is struggling to come up with a satisfactory answer. This can be avoided with a well-designed automated answering system.

Additionally, an automated answering service puts you in the driver’s seat of your brand interaction. Rather than relying on an employee and hoping they greet the customer in a satisfactory way, you can have complete control of what the customer hears when they first call you with a custom pre-recorded greeting. This allows you to create an initial brand experience that is uniform and professional.

Better Corporate Operations

Automated answering services aren’t just good for your customer, but also for the main operations of your business. They reduce the need for your call management to oversee tedious inbound call operations. By letting a machine handle the workload of sorting initial calls, your team can focus on doing what they do best.

Another way that automated answering services improve your operations is by making it easy to sort and measure inbound calls. At just a glance, you can see how many phone calls and voice messages you received, what the purpose of the calls was, and who the caller was trying to contact. Not only is it easy to sort through and retrieve your phone messages, but you also never have to worry about missed calls when you have an automated response online 24 hours a day. All of this can be easily implemented with minimal disruption and no extra hardware.

Fully Customizable

All of these solutions are fully customizable. You can route callers by task, department, or customer service questions. You can create custom call-in numbers that will offer customized greetings and options based on promotions or different geographies. And all of these customizations can be easily and flexibly modified to keep you in control in and out of the office. With all customizations, ROI is there to help you understand what will work best for your business and help you make a decision that will create the most convenient, flexible option possible.

Why ROI?

Of course, it is important to get the right provider to help you implement an automated answering service. ROI Call Center Solutions has years of experience helping clients implement automated answering services that are convenient, powerful, inexpensive, and flexible. We emphasize quality and efficiency as we listen to and identify our client’s specific needs. Contact us today to see how we can help and receive a free consultation.