Why Help Desk Outsourcing Is a Dangerous Strategy

Is your organization considering outsourcing an IT help desk? Not just the technology that provides IT support, but the entire kit and Kaboodle: the people, processes, and technologies that put the "life" of IT support in someone's hands.

This may sound scary, but outsourced service desk is a viable IT support sourcing option for almost 20 years, and there are certain caveats for companies managing their own in-house IT help services. , A proven alternative.

This section looks at the strengths and weaknesses of help desk outsourcing, from the cost benefits of outsourced help desk to the possible negative impact on business operations.

Key Advantages of Help Desk Outsourcing

You can think of outsourcing the help desk as saving money to finally have a positive impact on revenue. It is also true that outsourcing the help desk can reduce costs in economies of various sizes, primarily "do it yourself".

Subcontractors, for example, operate on a large scale, which can reduce the cost paid to suppliers. For example, better deals are negotiated with IT technical support tool providers. Or, if you provide customer IT equipment and third-party services, and IT support, these costs could also be saved.

There are also labor savings. First, a help desk service agent can handle multiple customer issues or requests, rather than being accessible only to support staff employed by an external help desk provider. Second, wherever possible, offshore work to achieve a low cost economy, ideally without affecting service quality and minimizing labor costs for subcontractors.

And with a fixed-price contract, you'll see the cost of your monthly IT support as an added cost-related benefit to your customers. Of course, of course, there are fluctuations in costs to accommodate changes in volume and changes in services and service levels.

Besides the cost, outsourcing the helpdesk has many other advantages. These include:

·         Increased availability: The cost of running a 24x7 help desk support services can be prohibitive for internal help desks. On the other hand, using an external help desk provider gives you the opportunity to use shared resources during off-peak hours, so your IT help desk will work even after your main business hours.

·         Using best practice processes: Help desk subcontractors must differentiate based on quality and cost to sell a service. Also, best practice processes must be optimized to save money.

·         Access to additional functions: In addition to replacing the existing functions of your help desk, subcontractors also offer you the opportunity to introduce additional functions that will help your IT organization fulfill its responsibilities. You These may be various IT support activities (ITSM) that are not currently ongoing. For example, IT asset management and problem management.

·         Access to additional technical knowledge and skills: Simply put, some technical roles and skills are difficult to justify because of cost, or to hire and maintain in a highly competitive market. It can be difficult External help desk providers have the scale to attract those with poor skills through high wages and different job and learning opportunities, thanks to the ability to "bill" staff to different customer accounts. 

·         Service Level Agreement (SLA) - Help Desk Outsourcing provides agreed service levels at the enterprise level and can be measured at the transaction level. For example, today's internal help desk may work hard to achieve fast resolution and provisioning, but may not have agreed service level goals for different types of tickets. Outsourcing comes with such goals and a monthly report that shows the level of achievement of the outsourcing company.

·         Improved geographic support: If your company is global, you have two main options for dealing with language differences. 1) Require all staff to speak to IT support staff in the company language (probably English), or 2. Staff who speak the local language cover a variety of regions. Additionally, there is a third option that encourages people to self-serve so that technology can transform interactions. Similar to the availability benefits mentioned above, third-party support providers can probably use the shared staff model to provide low-cost multilingual support.

·         Benchmarking Capabilities - help desk outsourcing companies providers are more positioned than in-house support services and measure performance against industry standards and benchmarks. In fact, the aforementioned external helpdesk SLA could be targeted along the industry benchmarks for indicators such as first contact resolution level, priority 1 resolution time, average wait time for calls etc. 

·         Helpdesk technology: Third-party support providers must provide the best combination of quality and cost, investing in technology and reducing the total cost of operations. This includes a wide range of IT support technologies, including proven help desk tools, advanced telephony systems, systems management and monitoring tools, remote control, chat, knowledge management and self-service functions. And it features as many labor-saving automations as possible. Outsourced vendors may have already invested in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies in the form of automated ticket and chatbot classification.

·         Pay-as-you-go contracts: Outsourced help desk contracts can come in a variety of flavors, from expensive all-you-can-eat models to phased-in, virtually "pay-what-you-consume" models. Here, the less outside help you use, the lower the cost.

Clearly, the relative effectiveness of each of these professionals depends on the current state of their existing internal help desk.

 Main disadvantages of outsourcing help desk

There are many benefits to obtaining from an external helpdesk. However, like many things in life, there are downsides to consider for those professionals.

Start with cost-related benefits. First, the contract costs (and savings) may not really apply. This is often when a particular business need has been omitted from the original contract negotiation and must be added later at an additional cost (perhaps with a different margin).

Second, continuing to the margin level, third-party support service providers are companies that need to ensure a certain margin for each transaction that contributes to overall profitability. If the required margin is not (in a "live" contract) and price negotiation is not an option (with the client), the quality level may be reduced. This may still be in line with agreed service level objectives, but unnecessary costs (usually roles / services) are reduced and the service level is "good enough".

Second, this "good enough" level of service may start paying customers more than they save with outsourcing contracts. Why Long-term disruption to IT issues has a negative impact on business and employee operations at significant cost.

And finally, in terms of costs, remediation actions can be delayed by the actions required to incur additional costs for external assistance service providers. For example, you may have to wait until you agree to incur additional costs.

Beyond cost, there are many disadvantages associated with the fact that the external help desk is outside of your organization. There are "cuts" in the organization at different levels. For example:helpdesk staff are inconsistent with the goals and culture of your organization. This can cause friction and confusion over how external help desk personnel treat end users.

·  Help desk staff can only have a superficial understanding of your organization's business operations. This means that the context and impact of IT issues may not be properly understood and addressed.

· The quality of the service and the level of customer knowledge can be affected by the movement of external help desk personnel. For example, a staff member may be trained in one account before moving on to another account. This also affects customer-supplier relationships at the individual level.

·Major incident type scenarios may feel "cold" or "clear" given the possible disconnect between the outsourced help desk and the customer representative. Also, IT support is an internal function.

·External help desk locations can also cause problems for customer employees, from cultural differences to the ease of conversation of help desk contacts. That is, the same language can be spoken, but the level of true understanding may not be sufficient.

· Customer-supplier relationships can be confusing for a variety of reasons, from high costs to poor quality and business impact. There is no longer a viable partnership in which both sides are heading in the same direction, but rather a hostile situation in which both sides want maximize what they can get from their contacts. The result may be a loss-loss, not a win-win situation.