Why it’s worth getting help for your help desk

As your IT infrastructure becomes increasingly complex, the help desk team you need to ensure your employees get timely, efficient technical support grows more critical — and tougher than ever to maintain as an in-house effort.

You’re not alone. Many enterprises now turn to third-party help desk providers.

Four help desk service provider payoffs

With the right help desk services provider, you’ll reduce both your IT operations costs and your hassle quotient. Here’s why:

1. 1. You won’t need to spend time and resources building and staffing an internal help desk functionality. Instead, the right third-party provider will be able to on-board you — and begin supporting your users — immediately, including 24 x 7 x 365 if that’s what you need.
   2. The right help desk provider can improve your technical support quality of service because a well-vetted, experienced help desk team has the technical expertise to help your people quickly and effectively — and to know when it’s time to escalate an issue.
   3. Your technical support costs will be more predictable and you’ll more quickly identify and address problems that impinge on business operations, thanks to this same high level of help desk quality of service.
   4. Your IT staff — and your IT infrastructure — avoid getting bogged down in support quagmires and can stay focused on core business and development projects.

   

   Choosing the help desk services provider that’s right for you

   I recommend looking for a provider that:

   • • Adheres to Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices as it responds to tens of thousands of incidents every month;

    

   • • Provides vetted teams of certified frontline-support technicians, either 8 x 5 or 24 x 7 x 365, as you require, to handle issues involving internet/network connectivity, password resets, operating system and desktop applications, enabling Exchange ActiveSync on mobile devices, custom/vertical/line-of-business applications, dispatch/call management services, and more;

    

   • • Offers two levels of technical support —
       • Level 1 that incorporates a call answering service, an after-hours user interface, troubleshooting, and call logging using a populated knowledge base to resolve an incident at first point of contact; that can resolve issues using remote control; and that includes Windows and Apple workstation as well as desktop peripheral hardware troubleshooting and triage; and
       • Level 2 to provide additional troubleshooting assistance; when a call can’t be resolved, predefined call escalation processes will elevate the issue to a qualified expert;

    

   • Is committed to sustaining high service-level metrics, as measured by first call resolution, average speed of answer, abandonment rate, and daily review and management of all measurements; and
   • Can provide all your help desk services needs or complement your existing staff whenever you face increased call volume.

    

   Until next time,

   Tim