Outsourced help desk support is contracting with a third-party provider to handle product and IT-related issues. Key benefits of outsourcing IT help desk and service desk solutions include cost-effectiveness, access to multilingual experts, 24/7 coverage, better flexibility, and improved customer satisfaction.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, efficient customer and technical support is critical to business success. Help desk support services provide vital assistance for product and IT-related issues through a combination of human expertise and automation. This guide explores the differences between help desks and service desks, the advantages of outsourcing, and how to choose the right provider to elevate your customer experience and operational efficiency.
Key takeaways
- Help desks and service desks serve distinct but complementary roles, with help desks focused on technical issue resolution and service desks offering broader customer support and business-aligned services. Understanding the differences helps businesses better allocate resources and meet user needs effectively.
- Outsourcing help desk support provides major advantages, including 24/7 availability, faster issue resolution, multilingual and multi-channel support, and improved scalability, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and operational efficiency.
- Choosing the right help desk provider is essential and should be based on industry expertise, security and compliance capabilities, SLA transparency, communication processes, and technology integrations to ensure a seamless and effective support partnership.
What are help desk support services?
A help desk is a technology system crucial to serving and retaining customers of all business sizes, from small- and medium-sized businesses to enterprises. Through dedicated human agents and automation technology, comprehensive help desk support services provide vital real-time support and address two main purposes:
- Product support – answers questions about or provides assistance for products and services.
- Technical support – manages issues by facilitating intake, answering simple requests, and routing tickets to appropriate teams.
Overview of IT help desk and service desk services
Of course, in informational technology, there’s always more to a topic than meets the eye. IT help desk services can be divided into a few specific services, help desks and service desks. Each plays distinct roles in customer support, helping businesses streamline operations and improve service quality.
Learn how to more accurately determine your help desk needs and effectively allocate your resources by understanding the key differences between help desk service desks.
Help desk: Focused on technical support, help desks assist customers through IT professionals trained in troubleshooting issues. Help desks can also offer self-service or self-help resources, such as FAQs, guides, and user manuals.
A help desk’s main aim is to offer effective solutions for user requests, or fixing issues rather than delivering a service.
Service desk: A single point of contact for customers and your company, service desks handle customer inquiries and provide support for products and services. Customer service professionals trained in handling a variety of inquiries also manage the company’s knowledge base, schedule appointments, and provide key knowledge about product updates and policy changes.
Service desks look at business needs as a whole, providing product support for customers.
Help desk outsourcing explained
Outsourced IT helpdesks are third parties contracted by a business to handle its IT and service desk requests. As outsourcing experts, they perform all the regular IT functions but with years of industry experience and the skills that come with customer support experience and adaptability.
Why help desk outsourcing?
Not everyone is an IT expert, but with outsourcing, you don’t have to be. Make the best decision for your business by accessing worldwide talent and industry-leading solutions tailored to your business. Outsourced help desks support your teams and customers while doing all the hard work to keep things running so you don’t have to think about greasing the constantly turning wheels.
Help desk outsourcing also helps you target the specific issues your customers may be facing. Provide proactive care with the skillful assistance your audience expects.
Types of help desk outsourcing
Which help desk services you outsource depends on the BPO provider, your operations, and your challenges and goals. Review these types of help desk outsourcing services to get the ball rolling as you determine which helpdesk support services are right for you:
- Helpdesk/end-user support resolves problems related to computers, software, or electronic devices.
- Cybersecurity and compliance management safeguards sensitive information, monitors for compliance threats, conducts risk assessments, responds to incidents, and performs compliance audits.
- Support desk services manage IT operations including end-user support, network security, data backup, and disaster recovery.
- Software deployment and maintenance includes installing business applications, updating software, and fixing issues.
Key benefits of help desk support solutions
When determining which help desk support solutions are right for your company, consider the possible benefits that will make the investment worthwhile. These significant results are key to enhancing customer service, setting the tone for interactions with customers and setting both parties up for immediate and long-term success.
1. 24/7 availability
Sometimes you simply can’t staff the hours you require, whether that’s due to budgetary constraints or a workforce limited by space or location. An outsourced IT helpdesk resolves this challenge while connecting you with expert professional technical and product support. Strategically source multilingual agents to align your brand culture and hours of operation with your audience’s, improving rapport, understanding, and trust.
Expanded coverage also communicates to your customers that you are a reliable resource capable of answering questions with responsiveness and high-quality care, anytime, anywhere.
Access skilled IT and customer service professionals onshore, nearshore, or offshore.
2. Faster issue resolution
While your internal staff may have previously been torn between answering requests and fulfilling daily responsibilities, outsourced support desks dedicate their time to resolving incoming queries. This focused attention results in not only better quality care but also better performance metrics.
Try these methods for improving issue resolution time:
- Customize Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus to efficiently route customers to the correct teams based on expertise and availability.
- Implement Agent Assist or Copilots to aid agents on live interactions.
- Set up tips and procedures to automatically trigger based on spoken keywords.
- Integrate automations to handle simple requests and common questions.
Efficiently managed queues also reduce your team’s average speed to answer and handle times, making customers happier and empowering your team to increase service capacity and profitability.
3. Improved customer satisfaction
It’s no secret that faster resolution times and streamlined processes increase customer satisfaction. Hubspot reports that 21% of customers expect their ticket to be resolved immediately, while 23% expect it to be resolved within an hour and another 23% of customers expect resolution within one to three hours.
As customers experience smooth interactions and compassionate service, CSAT and NP scores rise, increasing loyalty and retention. Outsourcing is revolutionizing standards of care by providing consumers comprehensive services that address their needs with precision, promptness, and empathy.
Our tip: Use predictive analytics to make data-informed decisions regarding customer sentiments and issues, allowing you to anticipate and resolve problems before customers call in.
4. Increased employee productivity
Busy workloads may seem a sign of productivity, but without the proper management of tasks, over-worked employees experience higher burnout and reduced productivity. Teams burdened with managing IT-related calls may not have the expertise to effectively resolve issues, leading to high escalation rates and resolution times. Frustration increases all around as overwhelmed staff struggle to manage daily operations on top of the additional workload.
An outsourced support desk tackles these challenges head-on, swiftly improving service quality in key ways:
- Proper tools efficiently route requests, reducing queues and response time.
- Experienced agents comfortably transition to your line of business, immersing in your brand to apply their knowledge to your industry-specific needs.
- Employees supported by high-quality infrastructure seamlessly streamline operations, working smarter and harder as service capacity increases.
- Balanced workloads increase employee satisfaction, reducing attrition and related hiring expenses.
5. Scalability and flexibility
Quickly hiring and implementing remote teams is the bread and butter of help desk service providers. The outsourcing experts staff your IT helpdesks with the technology and teams to efficiently manage your systems and securely handle customer requests.
Outsourcing IT helpdesk services also allows businesses to adjust the solutions according to current and future requirements, scaling up or down according to demand surges.
Our tip: Don’t forget to discuss any urgent hiring needs with potential providers as you prepare for busy seasons. Ask about trying a 30-day pilot period to determine proper fit and flexibility.
6. Centralized issue tracking
Partnering with a help desk BPO provider helps businesses streamline operations by consolidating the handling of issues and customer inquiries into one unified platform. This empowers agents to open tickets, resolve and document problems, and report and monitor issues without navigating multiple systems.
Not only does this process reduce the time agents spend managing issues, but it also ensures no issue falls through the cracks, increasing transparency and accountability.
Our tip: Demo proposed systems and ask how they integrate with your existing tech stack.
7. Data-driven insights
A unified tracking system enables you to get a full-picture view of your team’s performance and your customers’ own sentiments. Digital transformation through advanced AI technology includes interaction tracking and Machine Learning to understand and replicate human language, expanding your ability to improve customer experiences through automation.
AI models not only improve the quality of responses in real-time support, but they also provide real-time feedback and automate reports. Regular reports show how issues, performance, and sentiments change over time, helping businesses make decisions based on what customers want.
8. Cost efficiency
Building out an internal IT support team is a costly endeavor that doesn’t allow for the flexibility required for maintaining profitability during demand surges or lulls. Finding and equipping the physical space to host employees, along with all other overhead expenses and high investments in software and hardware, make it an unsustainable solution for many businesses.
Enter outsourced experts with the technical and support skills and tools they need to diagnose, resolve, and answer customer inquiries. The result? A scalable, cost-effective solution in the languages, hours, and skills you need to engage and retain customers.
AI models not only improve the quality of responses in real-time support, but they also provide real-time feedback and automate reports. Regular reports show how issues, performance, and sentiments change over time, helping businesses make decisions based on what customers want.
9. Compliance and security support
Experts in outsourcing operate with the utmost care for compliance regulations, especially when handling sensitive customer information. Reduce the errors your team sees by implementing a team practiced in strictly adhering to all relevant regulations. As a result, you’ll see these significant results:
- Increased trust
- Better-quality brand reputation
- Reduced legal action and fees correcting errors
- Better profitability from high-quality service
Our tip: Determine how much a potential provider complies with industry regulations by asking about these compliance and security strategies:
- Encryption using industry-standard protocols such as AES-256 and TLS 1.2/1.3
- Access controls to restrict who can handle certain sensitive information
- Data minimization to collect and retain only the necessary data for support, reducing exposure to sensitive information
- HIPAA compliance for medical organizations
- GDPR compliance for data protection
- Continuous evaluations reviewing internal processes and security measures
- Internal audits to assess compliance and provide unbiased evaluations of security practices
- Third-party audits from reliable sources to assess compliance and provide unbiased evaluations of security practices
- Vulnerability assessments to identify and address potential weaknesses
Want to scale your business?
Global Response has a long track record of success in outsourcing customer service and call center operations. See what our team can do for you!
10. Enhanced self-service options
Self-service optimizes operations while giving customers the instant professional assistance they want, increasing both service capabilities and customer satisfaction. An outsourced help desk provider can help you set up guides, tips, user manuals, FAQs, in-app self-portals, and other self-service options to help you achieve these tangible benefits:
- Higher ticket resolution at lower costs
- Reduced ticket volume
- Increased scalability
- Quick resolution times
- Around-the-clock personalized care
- More opportunities for engagement with your products and services
Our tip: Capture the bounteous perks of self-service with automated support and a responsive live chat.
11. Multi-channel support
With all the forms of communication available, meeting customers where they’re at is more important than ever. Ensure you catch and respond to every request by tracking phone, email, video, chat, SMS, and social media interactions and providing prompt expert IT assistance.
Omnichannel interaction tracking also helps companies track, find, and resolve technical issues before they escalate, ensuring a proactive approach to quality assurance in technical care.
Advantages of outsourced helpdesk solutions
Businesses can access the expertise required to maintain operations while enhancing customer support and resolving technical issues, all without needing to individually hire or build out the space for the team themselves. Outsourcing offers businesses a host of perks that make managing IT operations effective and stress-free:
- Reduced costs
- Updated tech integrations
- Streamlined operations
- Access to specialized skills
- Access to multilingual support
- 24/7 support
- Custom solutions
- Scalable teams
- Enhanced self-service
- Full contact center support
- Improved tracking and data analytics
Choosing the right help desk provider
The ultimate test to determine the value of IT helpdesk support services is to try it. While a partnership is a big jump, thorough interviews and pilot programs can help you feel more comfortable determining if an IT service desk company is for you.
Before you demo, put these key criteria on your outsourced help desk support must-have list and ask these key questions to find your ideal partner:
- Expertise and industry knowledge: Can they apply help desk skills to your services and products?
- Security measures: What security measures do they follow? (See above compliance checklist)
- Service level agreements: How do they measure performance? How do their performance expectations align with yours?
- Communication: What response timeline should you expect from them, and in which platforms?
- Technology integrations: What systems do they use to manage tickets? How do they integrate with your CRM?
Conclusion
Regardless of your technical expertise, you can access top-of-the-line help desk support through an outsourcing provider. Leverage the latest in technology and the strategies that push businesses toward continuous success by partnering with someone who enriches customer experiences with 24/7 high-quality helpdesk and service desk support.
Help customers help themselves with enhanced self-service and proactive solutions, ensuring you can capture the benefits of a scalable support team.
See how Global Response could be the right partner for your help desk needs. Contact us for a free quote today.
