Tips on How to Reduce Overhead Costs for Small Businesses
Why Consider Outsourcing to a Healthcare Call Center
Help desk outsourcing has long been seen as an important factor to boost customer experience while keeping cost at bay. Higher first contact resolution is a customer service metric indicating how to resolve an issue in a single phone call or response. It’s challenging for any business to improve customer satisfaction without the support of help desk services. Many business owners remain undecided about outsourcing IT help desk because of language barrier.
What Should You Expect From This Article?
This guide aims to help you navigate the ins and outs of help desk outsourcing. We will discuss the following:
What Is Help Desk Outsourcing?
Help desk outsourcing provides customers with information and support related to a company’s processes, products, and services. It aims to answer queries, troubleshoot problems, and facilitate solutions to resolve incidents. Help desk support may be provided in various channels to raise a customer’s request and get it answered. These channels include physical locations, toll-free numbers, websites, instant messaging, or email.
Mostly, customers often get confused between the help desk and service desk. It’s important to note that the help desk focuses on end-user needs. Technical support, for example, provides assistance among end-users in availing or using technology services. On the other hand, the service desk focuses on corporate strategy. It deals with resolving everything within the organization’s IT Policy and Guidelines. The service desk ensures organizations meet their business goals and increase their leverage in the market.
What Are the Different Levels of Help Desk Support?
There are different levels of help desk support. Each level varies on the extent of technical assistance provided to customers. IT companies follow these support levels to save the higher-skilled resources for creating new solutions and troubleshooting difficult problems. A typical IT help desk support infrastructure usually implements the following service levels:
Tier-0 Support
This refers to automated solutions that end users can access themselves without the help of a customer representative. These include automated password resets, Web sites for requesting ITIL support, and knowledge base lookup. Any new request received from this level can be transferred to the Tier-1 support desk for further processing.
Tier-1 Support
This support level consists of customer representatives who have a basic level of technical knowledge on their company’s products. They access resources in the technical knowledge base to find solutions for service desk requests. When they can’t resolve the reported incident, they pass the incident to a higher tier.
Tier-2 Support
Support personnel who handle this level have an in-depth understanding of their company’s product or service. They deal with escalated issues that Tier-1 support is not able to handle. Should they be unable to settle a customer’s problem, then they escalate the problem to Tier-3.
Tier-3 Support
This level requires subject matter experts who can handle complex issues and questions. They can find the root cause of a problem by using product code, designs, or specifications. Once they identify the root cause, findings will be documented as a future reference.
How Does the Help Desk Workflow Process Work?
It is important to understand the processes necessary when handling different requests. Having an understanding of such processes can lead to quicker resolutions. Also, it helps you to collaborate with support personnel more productively. Here’s the help desk workflow process in detail:
Register incident
The Incident shall be recorded and documented in appropriate quality. If there is a problem, customers can figure it out first with self-help options, such as FAQ databases. If they can’t resolve it themselves, they will create a ticket or incident report. This adds to the queue wherein a technician will handle it when they have time.
Process service request
In this process, it processes the type of service request. It comes with the type of support level required within the agreed resolution time.
Immediate Incident Resolution by 1st Level Support
This process brings all necessary information to the Level 1 technician. The first level technician analyzes all information submitted by the user and searches the knowledge base for the best solution to the problem. If they can’t resolve the issue, the first level technical requests help from the second-level analyst.
Analyze and Resolve Incident in 2nd Level Support
The second-level analyst studies the request and returns the solution. If they find it necessary, the solution is documented in the knowledge base so that the next similar occurrence at the first level can resolve the issue without contacting the second level.
Monitor and Escalate Incidents
This process continuously monitors the status of outstanding incidents. This is to introduce counter-measures as soon as possible if service levels are likely to be breached.
Proactively Inform Users
Technical Level 1 confirms the user’s problem will be solved with the proposed solution. If not resolved, returns to the level 2 analyst. If so, the level 1 sends a confirmation to the user.
Close and Evaluate Incident
The user makes a test solution and checks if the solution works. If it does not work, technical level 3 will take over the process. Once resolved, the process closes. Additionally, findings from the resolution are to be recorded for the future.
Maintenance of Support Knowledge Base
Findings from the processing of incidents are incorporated into the Support Knowledge Base. This will help support levels to process future incidents more efficiently.
Carry Out Incident Management Reporting
This provides insights to monitor potential problems and root causes as they recur. The reporting of these problems and root causes increases the chances that repeating failures will be noticed and corrected before they escalate to more serious incidents.
What Are the Benefits of Outsourcing Help Desk Services?
Having a help desk service is like having a resource center for all your customer service communications. It helps you to streamline your customer support tasks. When customers are happy, they stay loyal which brings in higher revenue.
Higher Customer satisfaction
One of the main benefits of a help desk service is having a higher customer level satisfaction. It satisfies customers when they get instant responses to their queries. With help desk services, customers know exactly where to go for technical support. Hence, they can work more successfully with your product or service and will be loyal to it over the long term.
Faster ticket resolution
Help desk services can streamline the processing of incoming help desk cases. This helps your support team to have more time on addressing reported incidents. When an incoming incident arrives, it is automatically registered into a system, routed to the appropriate support personnel, analyzed, resolved, and documented for future reference. All these processes increase efficiency which results in faster ticket resolution.
Improvement of product or service
Help desks can improve the quality of your company’s products or services too. Help desk records customer complaints, issues, and problems day to day into a support knowledge base. This knowledge base is essential in supplying feedback to your development team. Having said that, your product designers are aware of what to implement for improvements.
Increase in revenue growth
Implementing help desk support improves productivity, product, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency. With these improvements, your recurring revenue will remain steady and reliable. Also, help desk support provides you superior customer support in the market. This can help you generate more leads and close more deals with new customers.
How Much Does Outsourcing Help Desk Services Cost?
The average cost of outsourcing help desk services might be a little bit tricky. This is because every business has very different needs. Usually, some businesses begin with a basic service package. This package includes remote monitoring, updates, server management, etc. However, if you opt to outsource this service, a basic service package will cost you somewhere between $100-$400, per device, per month. Also, there may be additional one-time charges for emergency on-site visits or strategic planning sessions. Learn more about call center pricing.
Furthermore, the cost of outsourcing IT help desk services depends on the size of your organization. But if you prioritize high-quality service at a low cost, you may consider the Philippines. It is an excellent choice for its key competencies such as its educated workforce, efficient labor practices, industry expertise, low labor cost, and strategic location.
Here are additional factors that can determine the cost of outsourcing IT help desk services:
-
-
- The length of time of the contract
- The level of expertise of the KYC specialist hired
- Existing laws set by the government on the services you request
- The location of your business
- Other extra services
-
Meanwhile, here are companies that benefit from outsourcing help desk services:
Microsoft
This multinational technology company had outsourced its business functions including IT help desk, desk-side services, and application support. Also, some of its internal IT services were managed by an IT consulting company in India.
Anheuser-Busch InBev
This global brewer company had outsourced its IT help desk solutions to international outsourcing providers. It outsourced its IT functions to IBM and its global communications infrastructure to BT Global Services.
Citi
This financial services company has been outsourcing its tech operations since 1992. It is among those US companies that outsource services in the Philippines. In fact, the Philippines has already provided IT-related services to this financial giant.
Ford Motor Company
This American automobile giant had also outsourced its IT and customer support overseas. Today, most of the components of a typical Ford vehicle are made offshore. Aside from manufacturing, Ford also offshores customer support services, live chat support services, and email support services.
Rio Tinto
This mining corporation in Australia has also been capitalizing on help desk managed services. Some of their services that are being taken care of by their service providers include legal work, application management, application development, and customer service desk.
What Should You Look for in Help Desk Outsourcing Companies?
Choosing the right service provider is as important as having clear and measurable performance guidelines. After all, your service provider may impact your entire business. In fact, you can achieve the true benefits of help desk services by choosing the right provider. Here are some key things to consider in looking for help desk outsourcing companies:
Industry experience
A help desk role is a highly technical job. Having said that, your service provider must have a reliable experience to deliver excellent customer service. Also, a lengthy experience equates to a better knowledge of help desk services. With adequate experience, they have the right product knowledge and problem-solving skills that can be your organization’s best assets.
Quality control and monitoring
This matters in delivering quality services that exceed your customer’s expectations. It reflects how a service provider minimizes waste and operates at high levels of productivity. Quality control and monitoring ensure the consistency and quality of a product or service. Thus, you should choose a service provider that encourages quality consciousness.
Culture fit
It’s important to align your company culture with your service provider. A service provider that understands your business goals will help you succeed. Also, they are more likely to perform better for success. Hence, you should find a service provider that can be an extension of your team.
Value for money
Some outsourcing companies will charge you higher rates based on their reputation. Having said that, it’s crucial to find a service provider that offers flexible rates. But keep in mind to work only with service providers that don’t compromise their service quality. After all, it’s still the quality that helps you maintain customer satisfaction.
Help Desk Outsourcing in the Philippines
The current growth rate of the help desk outsourcing industry is reported by nearly 60-70% each year. The Philippines, an ideal outsourcing location, has been a major contributor to its substantial growth. This is due to its service improvements and quality customer service. If you’re looking for an outsourcing location with up-to-date technology and a rich talent base, the Philippines could be on your top list!
Magellan Solutions offers IT help desk outsourcing services to all businesses of all kinds. Our skilled support team will help you reduce your ticket volumes for better customer support. We also provide multilingual customer support for your foreign-language-speaking customers. Also, we are ISO and HIPAA certified to guarantee the safety of your information.
Are you looking for responsive and round-the-clock technical assistance to your customers? Fill out the form below to get a free consultation.
TALK TO US!
Contact us today for more information.
