Experience the Benefits of Outsourcing your Help Desk Services

Perhaps the greatest source of pain and frustration within any company is customer service and support. For many businesses in the 21st century, IT professionals have to be both computer savvy and socially polite in order to handle putting out the multitude of fires that arise in the course of an average day or week.

This often leads to overstressed and overworked IT professionals at the help desk who are fielding calls and email inquiries from employees and customers with IT issues. When the customer support desk becomes overwhelmed, customers get angry in a hurry and the image of your business takes a hit.

Outsourcing your help desk services to an external party can bring a variety of benefits to your business from reducing costs to lightening the load for stressed IT employees. Before you say no to the idea, consider all the benefits to be gained from outsourcing customer support operations.

Greater Flexibility

Without question, the greatest benefit is the improved flexibility of your help desk service. If your help desk professionals are located in New York and clients from California have IT issues near the end of their business day, how are they going to get the assistance they need? That three hour time difference can leave a client in need at 4pm in California out in the cold because at 7pm your time, your professionals are all gone for the day.

If your help desk has been outsourced to a professional provider, their team of support professionals is often spread across various time zones. This means that whether your physical location is open or closed, there is a customer support professional waiting to help your clients.

Better Management and Tracking

When your help desk services are outsourced to a group of third-party professionals, so too is a great deal of work and cost. An outside provider takes on the cost and responsibility of installing, maintaining, and operating sophisticated telephony systems, data management teams, and other hardware.

In addition to maintaining the facilities and equipment needed to run a support desk, an outside provider takes on the responsibility for recruiting, hiring, and training customer support professionals. It will also be their responsibility to track hours worked and days missed, as well as pay salaries and provide benefits.

Rather than asking your IT professionals to pull double duty as computer whizzes and customer service specialists, they can focus on the role they were trained for: computer system’s management.

Reduced Costs

Outsourcing your help desk operations to a third-party provider also helps greatly reduce costs for your business. An in-house support desk operation requires greater cost because now all the telephone systems and computer support equipment have to be purchased, maintained, and repaired by your team of professionals.

Additionally, your Human Resources department is now responsible for activities such as recruiting, hiring, training, and tracking the performance of all the individuals in your help desk group. By removing these strains from both your IT department and HR department, you are freeing them up to perform more vital services and saving money at the same time.

Knowledge of Industry Experts

When clients call into your business with a concern, complaint, or other problem there is nothing they enjoy less than hearing a confused or otherwise uncertain employee on the other end. Try as you might, your business will have a difficult time finding enough bodies to fill all the positions within the help desk and IT group that you need to adequately and properly resolve issues.

Third-party providers hire a top-notch team of experts with the skills to succeed in a customer service environment while also exercising their IT knowledge to solve the problems of your clients. It is particularly helpful to seek out a help desk company that specializes in serving your particular industry to ensure you are outsourcing services to the best possible team of professionals.

Rapid Response

Last but not least, there is the benefit of improved response time for both your employees and your clients. With an in-house customer support desk, it is easy for your employees to become overwhelmed by the volume of problems from time to time. This not only slows your company’s response to client issues, but it also prevents your IT professionals from putting out in-house fires that flare up.

Many professional help desk providers have the advanced computer technology to remotely solve problems. This allows their team of professionals to address issues immediately by gaining remote access. In the process, your client’s issues are solved faster and with less stress.

Touch Support has been in the business of providing outsourced help desk solutions for over 10 years.  Contact us today to learn more!