Considerations in Outsourcing Service Desk

This is the fourth blog in a five part series on "Providing a World Class Service Desk". In my last article, I introduced five metrics to help you track performance and make sure you're meeting the right goals. This blog addresses long-standing questions about offshore or offshore recruiting from customer service. It also explains how to prevent your service desk from losing efficiency.

If you want to offer the best IT services in the most cost-effective way possible, you should answer frequently asked questions about IT strategy. Is outsourced service desk a good option for your organization? There is no correct answer. The best way for someone else may not work for you, and vice versa. Instead, many factors involved in this decision must be carefully considered. That is what this blog will cover.

One of the most important considerations is whether the choices you make can meet the service level requirements (SLRs) of your business customers. First, you must evaluate and validate these SLRs to provide context for your decisions. With these requirements in mind, here are some other points to consider about outsourcing, and whether they are right for your business.

outsourcing

At this point, we are all familiar with outsourcing. The entire service table is delivered to a contractor and is provided as a service to users. Despite the different ownership models, it is equally important that the service desk acts as a perfectly integrated part of the organization, responding dynamically and effectively to the dynamic demands of its user base.

Expand / Reduce - Do service providers allow you to expand and shrink to meet peak and valley demand? How quickly and efficiently can they do it and how do they charge it? You should provide a predictable cost plateau to help you plan and control costs. Be careful not to subscribe to a volume-based linear service charge. Otherwise, unplanned costs can fluctuate significantly.

Quality of service and cost of service: Businesses often outsource their service desks to improve service quality, reduce costs, or both. The trap they can fall into supposes that the support service is a product that a third party can automatically make better and cheaper. Perhaps not necessarily. To determine how realistic these goals are, you must first understand how quality and cost are measured today, then carefully analyze opportunities for improvement on both sides. The last thing you want to do is experience all the problems of outsourcing.

Change management: everyone knows that IT means constant change. How is the provider managing it? What processes do you have in place to keep up with changes in the environment? What is the fee structure? If the cost of each change is too high, you will pay a significant fine to achieve business-dependent agility.

Turnover: The way your supplier treats employees (reflected in turnover) has a direct impact on the attitude and quality of service your customers encounter when they call. Request a tour of the facility. Do you want to work there? If you see signs of employee dissatisfaction, users are likely to do so as well, which can negatively affect your business. If they always have to hire new people who have little understanding of their environment, that will also make the wrong difference.

Talent: As explained in our previous blog, the people who work in the services are a key component of their effectiveness. How does the provider work for the business? How are they hired, trained, and what practices are practiced to ensure consistently high staff performance?

Documentation: How ready are you to fully document your support environment until you can deliver it to a third party for operation? Can your staff document and report any significant changes you make to it? If you hesitate to respond, it may be a warning sign. If service desk providers fly blind, it's only a matter of time before things turn sideways or get worse.

Dedicated and Shared Support Models: Do Providers Provide Dedicated Support Resources to Learn About Your Environment and Unique Support Resources? If your company is just one of several clients supported by the same team, you will not receive the focused attention and consistent service that you would provide with an in-house or dedicated team. The only way suppliers can manage their business.