Five Signs You Need an Outsourced Helpdesk

Our helpdesk is a critical part of your business operations. People are increasingly time poor these days, and when technical problems arise, they want solutions at their fingertips. If a read through the FAQs on your intranet site doesn’t present an immediate answer, chances are people will call your helpdesk, even for minor queries.

If you have a helpdesk that isn’t running smoothly, it can result in unhappy staff and impact their productivity in a number of ways. Here are five signs that it might be time to consider outsourcing your helpdesk operations:

Helpdesk staff members are taking too long to answer calls – long call response times are a major driver of customer dissatisfaction.
You are having difficulty in staffing the hours of operation – IT helpdesks might need to provide customer support outside of the 9 to 5 workday and on weekends, which can cause staffing headaches.
You are struggling to implement procedures around ticketing, escalation of issues in a timely manner, and incident reporting. You can’t measure and improve helpdesk operations if there are no systems for reporting.
You don’t have enough staff members with the right knowledge and expertise to take calls – this can lead to more customers calling back because of unresolved issues.
You are using staff members with high levels of expertise to resolve common tech queries – data restores, password resets, printer jams and questions about slow response times are simple and generally easy to solve. These queries shouldn’t be taking up the valuable time of your technical experts.

The benefits of outsourcing

One of the major benefits of outsourcing your helpdesk is that it frees up time and staffing resources to focus on the core areas of your business. Outsourcing can also:

Increase productivity – Lost productivity costs your business. A well-run helpdesk with experienced staff can get through more calls and deal with queries faster than staff members who don’t have technical know-how, or who may be answering the phones in addition to their normal duties.
Boost customer service – Making sure calls are picked up in a timely manner and that customer issues are handled by people with sufficient technical expertise is likely to result in much higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Alleviate staffing issues – Outsourcing means you no longer have to worry about finding the right employees to staff your helpdesk.

Preparing to outsource

There are a number of steps you can take to ensure outsourcing your helpdesk is a smooth process. To start with, it’s a good idea to find a provider which is based in Australia. Many customers prefer to speak to someone local, especially when it comes to complex IT matters, so there isn’t the added stress of communication issues.

It’s also important to be clear about your requirements around the hours of operation, expected call response times, and system of ticketing, incident escalation and reporting.

Outsourcing worthy of consideration

If you’re noticing any of these five common signs of helpdesk trouble, or your helpdesk is just not operating as efficiently as it should be, outsourcing can be an effective and affordable solution.