Outsourcing technical support is a powerful solution to companies facing rising costs without better results, frequent downtime and slow issue resolution, high employee turnover, a lack of 24/7 coverage, limited expertise for specialized issues, negative customer feedback about tech support, and difficulty scaling support for growth. Discover how the tech support BPO providers achieve exceptional results, turning churn to retention and frustration to satisfaction, in this blog.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Technology innovations are transforming industries, placing more pressure on companies not only to push their services to the next level but also to provide more expert IT support for their employees and customers. Complex IT support needs beg the question, “Is it time to outsource technical support?”
The benefits of outsourcing are well-documented: outsourcing is famous for companies looking to reduce costs, enhance customer experience, and improve productivity with fewer but more impactful resources. Power the scalability that outsourcing is famous for by starting with the fundamental services that keep your entire company running. Outsource technical support for a truly effective outsourcing model from the ground up.
Learn how to make the most of outsourced IT solutions by reading this blog taking a deep look into what you can expect from technical support services.
Key takeaways
- Outsourcing technical support enhances efficiency and scalability by reducing tech support costs, accessing global expertise, and offering 24/7 coverage and tailored solutions.
- Common myths about outsourcing are often unfounded: outsourcing is not just for large enterprises. It enhances quality, and it doesn’t mean losing control. When done right, a collaborative partnership drives growth and innovation.
- A successful outsourcing strategy requires vetting providers carefully, looking for relevant certifications, strong security measures, clear SLAs, and cultural alignment to ensure consistent, high-quality technical support.
Why businesses delay outsourcing technical support?
Customer service is often the first and only use of outsourcing to many newcomers to the industry. While it’s certainly where BPO providers shine, outsourcing is ideal for other services, as well — particularly IT services.
As lucrative as outsourcing is, it comes with plenty of myths, biased opinions, and pieces of misinformation that can lead to a delay in outsourcing technical support for many companies. But determining if outsourcing is right for your company takes tackling these common misconceptions:
Myth 1: Outsourcing comes with high costs, making it only accessible to enterprises.
Fact: As long as a company faces high enough support demand, expanding a team through an outsourced partner reduces costs and allows the business to identify and act on revenue-generating ideas.
Outsourcing is usually priced per agent per month, with additional fees based on services provided and technologies utilized. Providers comfortable in providing custom solutions can make your customer service and IT support accessible for small- and medium-sized businesses as well as enterprises.
Myth 2: Outsourcing only focuses on cutting costs, leading to a loss in quality.
Fact: Outsourcing providers access a constantly updated global pool of experts not only in customer support but also in a host of services such as technical support. Outsourced teams face higher quality control standards than internal teams through various processes:
- Quality assurance frameworks
- Compliance and security measures
- Automated assistance and follow-up
- Clear Service Level Agreements
These measures result in higher performance quality and more proactive IT service management than businesses are used to seeing.
Additionally, the right technical support partner aligns their strategies with your goals, approaching your partnership with proactive and comprehensive growth through their dedicated support.
Myth 3: Outsourcing makes companies lose control of their business.
Fact: Outsourcing providers take over certain operations for a business, allowing the internal team to focus on managing daily operations or other business initiatives.
While some may consider this a loss of control, to get the most out of outsourced IT solutions, parties should view it instead as what it really is: a partnership — a collaboration. Establish clear performance and reporting expectations to stay in the loop while enjoying the lightened workload.
Experts know that high-quality outsourced IT solutions and expert modern IT service management can push businesses toward success with responsive, expert care.
7 signs to outsource your technical support
Now that you’ve tackled the roadblocks to IT outsourcing, understand the tell-tale sales that outsourcing is just what your company needs to streamline operations while maximizing productivity.
1. Rising IT support costs without better results
Executives should expect to invest in their companies, but it’s important to understand the difference between giving your teams the support they need and dropping more resources than is sustainable into maintaining or growing operations.
Assess return on investment by tracking these metrics:
- Performance
- Overhead costs
- Outsourcing costs
- Fluctuations in support demand
When overhead costs start to outweigh outsourcing costs, it’s time to outsource.
You can also calculate ROI by using this formula:
ROI = [(Total benefits – total costs) / Total costs] x 100
2. Frequent downtime and slow issue resolution
The ever-present challenge of managing a team is balancing workloads while maximizing profit and ensuring employee satisfaction. Especially in IT, issue resolution time is vital for ideal customer and employee experiences. Investigate both downtime and issue resolution time to assess the appropriate outsourcing solutions to address them.
- Excessive downtime can signify your company doesn’t see the demand to warrant a full-time in-house team.
- A lack of downtime can signal that your team is overwhelmed, requiring assistance from a scalable team of dedicated agents to handle the volume.
- Similar to the above points, slow issue resolution can demonstrate a need for expert assistance or a re-imagined strategy to improve efficiency in IT and overall productivity.
Use this formula to calculate the cost of downtime for your company:
Downtime Cost = Minutes of Downtime x Cost per Minute
Downtime in the IT industry is typically calculated at $5,600 per minute, which can translate to $3 million per hour.
3. High employee turnover in your IT team
While additional business is a sign you’re doing something right by your audience, the impact on your team is significant and deserves evaluating. Increased business means increased support demands — especially IT support demands, as surges in visits to your websites can cause crashes or bring latent issues to the surface.
Higher workloads can boost productivity, but after that sweet spot, overburdened employees face high risk of burnout. These symptoms can significantly impact service quality and customer and employee satisfaction, leading to churn, and attrition
- Fatigue
- Increased irritability or negativity
- Absenteeism
- Performance decline
- Decrease in motivation
Outsourcing is all about scalability. Managers dip into vast global pools of agents ready to onboard. Advanced technologies empower teams to forecast demand, empowering them to hire and manage appropriate staffing levels while maximizing productivity and profitability.
4. Lack of 24/7 coverage
On-site tech support offers employees immediate assistance, but business hours limit the amount of assistance IT teams can offer customers or remote workers around the clock. Delayed responses can lead to issues of varying levels of severity:
- Escalated issues
- Increased demand
- Increased downtime
- High costs
- Lost business
- Damaged reputation
Outsourced remote tech support, by contrast, can guarantee 24/7 coverage with a scalable team of dedicated technical support agents. Outsourced IT teams target challenges, turning them into successes through strategic methods:
- Real-time monitoring flags potential issues for immediate action.
- Forecasting scales team sizes to anticipated demand.
- Automations, custom IVRs and ACDs, and self-service options (FAQs, guides, app portals) efficiently manage and reduce queues.
- Speedy support reduces downtime.
- Outsourced solutions reduce costs and maximize efficiency.
- Proactive methods identify revenue-generating opportunities.
- High-quality IT solutions enrich experiences, increasing customer trust and brand reputation.
5. Limited expertise for specialized issues
You can’t always anticipate the range of issues your technical support team must handle at any given moment. Multi-level technical support is divided into tiers, or levels, to identify, categorize, and provide solutions for issues based on type and complexity.
The limited scalability of internal teams restricts the amount of hiring you can do to give your company the expert assistance they need for a range of issues that arise on urgent timelines.
Outsourcing ensures your business can offer the various technical support services necessary to expertly handle complex challenges. Technical support BPO providers do this through a comprehensive strategy:
- Vetting candidates with diverse and specialized skills
- Adaptable mindsets
- Continuous improvement via regular training and certification courses
- Infrastructure and technology assistance to empower growth
If your team could benefit from these features of outsourced technical support, now is the time to make the switch.
6. Negative customer feedback about tech support
Technical support quality sets the tone for customer experiences and as such, can impact loyalty and churn. Insufficient resolutions, long wait times, and unprofessional care frustrates customers, turning them away as they look for better and more responsive support elsewhere. Retention suffers and business success is at risk.
Turn negative feedback into an opportunity for transformative growth. As customer service experts, BPO providers know how to transform discontent into satisfaction. Keep an eye on trends in customer sentiments through omnichannel interaction tracking, sentiment analytics, customer journey mapping, and survey implementation.
7. Difficulty scaling support for growth
Expanding teams to match growing demand incurs significant costs in overhead, staffing, office space, equipment, hardware, software, and management. Such drastic changes may pay off initially, but lulls can make the efforts ineffective and costly in the long run.
Outsourced IT solutions empower companies to quickly scale without having to worry about these challenges. The right BPO partner takes a multi-step approach to tailoring solutions to your current needs and your long-term growth:
- Assessing your challenges, providing relevant solutions and analyzing personnel needs according to real data.
- Accessing experts in onshore, nearshore, and offshore locations who are ready to work in the languages and hours you need.
- Hiring teams on your timeline, recruiting applicants with specific skills and certifications.
- Streamlining onboarding and training through hands-on learning.
- Implementing advanced technology to enhance tech support solutions and optimize performance.
- Monitoring trends in real time and providing tips for continuous improvement.
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!
Benefits of outsourcing technical support
Third-party expertise can be the best, quickest, and most effective route to achieving the results you seek for your business. Technical support is a booming industry, and outsourcing experts know how to tap into industry leading resources to optimize processes and maximize profits.
Outsourcing can overhaul your operations by leveraging readily available, professional technical support teams who are the best fit for your business. Select services that resonate with customers and provide these sustainable immediate and long-term benefits of outsourcing technical support:
- Cost savings
- Enhanced customer experience with faster resolutions
- Improved productivity by freeing internal teams for core tasks
- Access to advanced tools and IT service management best practices
How to choose the right outsourced technical support partner
Choosing an outsourcing partner can be a daunting task. Options abound, and choosing just one can feel like a leap of faith with significant consequences.
While the decision is an important one, you can tackle the search with confidence by conducting thorough research, narrowing your options to relevant providers that stand out with relevant exceptional experience, and interviewing potential providers to determine the best fit for your company.
Questions to ask vendors
- Will agents be hybrid, in-center, or remote?
- What are your security protocols?
- Do you provide agents with computers? How do you secure corporate or personal computers?
- What certifications do you hold?
- Do you have a helpdesk for agent tech issues?
- Describe the recruitment process and anticipated onboarding timeframes.
- What is your QA process?
- What was your downtime due to weather in the last six months?
- What reporting do you provide and how often?
- What strategies do you use to expand coverage and minimize downtime?
- Which key performance indicators (KPIs) do you track?
- How can you align your values with my company’s and translate that to agent behavior?
Must-have checklist
- Relevant certifications
- Strict compliance adherence standards
- Clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
- Proven methods that drive realistic yet exceptional performance
- References from similar clients or partners
- Case studies to assess performance
Conclusion
Certain situations indicate that you’re in the prime conditions to outsource technical support: rising costs without better results, frequent downtime and slow issue resolution, high employee turnover, a lack of 24/7 coverage, limited expertise for specialized issues, negative customer feedback about tech support, and difficulty scaling support for growth.
Instead of seeing these challenges as insurmountable roadblocks to success, shift your perspective. View them as an opportunity to access expert assistance and dedicated support.
Evaluate your current support system to determine if outsourced technical support is right for your team. Discuss your situation with an expert who can then tailor solutions to you. Contact Global Response today to kickstart your outsourced tech support journey.
Contact Global Response today to see how we can improve your contact center compliance and customer trust.
Outsource Technical Support FAQs
Benefits of outsourcing technical support include cost efficiency, enhanced customer experiences, faster issue resolutions, improved productivity, and access to advanced tools and IT service management best practices.
Outsourced IT support costs vary depending on business size, BPO provider, services included, and agent team size. Managed IT services range from $125 to $255 per computer-using employee per month. Flat-rate monthly IT services range from $1,000 to $5,000 per month. Generally, onshore call centers cost $28 to $38 per agent per hour, nearshore call centers cost $13 to $18 per agent per hour, and offshore call centers cost $9 to $17 per agent per hour.
Yes, outsourcing technical support can improve customer satisfaction. Expert timely assistance is proven to improve customer experiences, engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
In-house IT relies on internal technical support employees to manage all technical support requests, regardless of expertise. Volume surges overwhelm employees, increasing response times and downtimes. It also requires high costs in times of expansion with additional staff, office space, and hardware and software needs. Outsourced IT solutions utilize global experts in scalable teams with advanced technology to reduce costs, increase availability, and improve customer satisfaction.
Yes! Remote tech support is often more effective than on-site support because flexible hiring, more specialized expertise, enhanced self-service, and real-time analytics increase coverage and improve service quality.
Companies can ensure data security with outsourced technical support by evaluating a potential provider’s experience, compliance protocols, certifications, integration security, access controls, frameworks, and auditing and escalation strategies.
