Most organizations start out with internal help desks, whether out of necessity or a sense that in-house IT staff can provide a more personal touch. However, growing user demands and increasing diversity of devices and applications have made the in-house help desk impractical.
Furthermore, in a tight labor market, help desk support needs tend to increase. The help desk burden becomes so great that IT teams cannot respond promptly, and skilled technical resources are diverted from critical tasks.
Today’s remote and hybrid workstyles have only added to the challenges. There are several products that give help desk teams the ability to connect to remote devices so that they can support a geographically distributed workforce. However, users are always on. They’re working when they want to work, and that might be at 2:00 a.m. They need support if they have a problem, yet it’s incredibly expensive to staff a 24x7 help desk.
Help desk support is time-consuming, and most IT teams are already maxed out. And, in reality, few IT pros want to support users and desktops. They would rather be sharpening their skills by working on innovative solutions.
Key Questions to Ask
Help desk outsourcing can alleviate these challenges. By contracting with a third-party provider that specializes in help desk support, organizations can refocus their IT staff on business-enabling initiatives. The right help desk provider will have highly trained staff available around the clock, improving response times, reducing costs and optimizing the user experience.
Of course, organizations that decide to outsource should conduct due diligence before partnering with a help desk provider. There are a number of help desk services on the market, but very few offer 24x7x365 support. Those that do, often rely on third-party, offshore partners to keep costs down. They have limited control over service levels and quality, and can’t guarantee that experienced personnel with the right skillsets will always be available.
It’s also important to scrutinize the provider’s service offerings and limitations. Can the provider support all the devices, operating systems and applications that users depend on? What happens if the help desk team encounters a problem they cannot solve? Do they have an internal escalation process, or does the problem get shuttled back to the customer?
How SirviS Can Help
SirviS has developed a unique help desk solution that allows you to fully offload the support burden so that your IT team can drive real value to the company. Our help desk team is U.S.-based and staffed by more than 200 experts. We deliver highly responsive 24x7x365 support that covers Apple and Android devices as well as PCs and laptops. We support all of the Office suite applications, including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint.
We will also support and troubleshoot other applications that are critical to the business. For example, a medical facility might utilize Cerner for its electronic health records. We can provide basic support, then escalate to the customer’s IT team if there’s a problem with the application itself. Or we can act as the customer’s surrogate and work directly with the vendor until the problem is resolved. The choice is up to the customer.
Our help desk team can also escalate more complex issues to our engineers. The objective is to ensure that every problem is solved and users are completely satisfied with the results, while minimizing the involvement of the customer’s in-house IT team.
Help desk outsourcing has become a near necessity, but choosing the wrong provider can be a costly headache. In our next post, we’ll go into further detail about the SirviS help desk and the benefits it brings to customers.
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