How Would My Business Benefit from Help Desk Services?

You can’t always predict the need for help desk services

Think back to particularly hectic periods for your IT Team. Even with the best-laid plans, you can’t always predict when you’ll receive a surge in help desk requests that can derail your task list. An unexpected emergency could arise at any time. The worst-case scenario would be receiving an influx of help desk tickets during a time your team is engaged in bigger, more complex projects. 

 Being torn away to tend to small tasks can stall your momentum. Whether you find yourself with a fluctuating need for help desk coverage, sudden surges, or you feel understaffed and under-equipped in general, outsourcing your help desk comes with clear benefits.  

 If you’re looking to provide a more consistent level of customer service, cut down on costs, and save IT staff time for more strategic responsibilities, you may find great value in outsourced help desk solutions.  

Outsourced help desk benefits

Your help desk is staffed by customer service experts

Is your information technology team expected to wear many hats throughout the day? Even if you have extremely talented team members, if they aren’t dealing with customer support issues on a daily basis, they are not going to be experts. When you outsource your help desk services, it means you will be working with a dedicated support team that eats, sleeps, and breathes technical support. They’re well-trained and at the ready to determine the best course of action for a wide variety of scenarios.  

 When you hire help desk services, you’ll get a team that is solely focused on solving support problems for your users. This means no mental switching between different types of tasks. Research shows that task switching can take anywhere from a few seconds to a half-hour away from a person’s day per task, and context switching can really trash productivity. If your internal team is expected to handle projects on top of help desk work, there could be a lot of mental switching time going to waste.  

 An outsourced technical support team is also better equipped to handle all problems that come in, versus the frequently seen help desk ticket requests your team may be more familiar and comfortable with addressing. 

 If service desk support is not a core competency of your business or not something that staff members have equal skill at doing, it’s generally a better idea to leave it to a team full of customer service experts with a deeper knowledge base. That way, your users experience quicker resolution and a more consistent experience.   

 You also don’t need to worry about being up on the latest products and services for the perfect ticketing system or other help desk software solutions. The right outsourced help desk team will be able to advise on the best cloud-based or desktop software solutions, for example, or the best help desk software for mobile devices. They can also advise you on service levels that are appropriate for any size of business.  

 Your help desk team has 24-hour availability

You could staff your IT team to have someone available at all hours of the day. However, most of that on-call time in off-hours will likely go on without a request. Help desk outsourcing means that in those rare middle-of-the-night instances, you have a team ready to help, without worrying about excessive staffing.  

 Users experience increased productivity

When you have third-party help desk services, you not only enjoy the benefits of a focused, specialized call center that is available 24 hours, but their quick response time and expertise mean that your users will experience faster resolutions. Your IT team won’t have to juggle help desk responsibilities alongside other obligations. When your users can get a faster resolution, they can get back to being productive more quickly.  

 Free up time for IT staff

Instead of getting bogged down with day-to-day tasks, free up your team to do work that is more strategic in nature. Use the minds at your disposal to work on growing the business, starting new initiatives, and serving your users more effectively.  

 Flexible staffing options

As we mentioned before, it can be hard to predict surges in help desk requests. However, if you beef up your staffing too much, you may run the risk of having to let team members go, or lose revenue during slow periods. With help desk services, you can add more help to your team during busy times and drop down when things are light without changing your internal staffing.  

 Reduce costs

With the help desk benefits mentioned above, a lot of little pieces can add up. When you give time back to your staff, help reduce downtime and increase productivity for users, all while keeping your team from having to switch between task types, you can reduce costs significantly.  

Looking to learn more about help desk services for your business?

If you’re ready to unleash your IT team on bigger and better things, set yourself up to handle any requests that come in, and you’re looking to save money and time, learn more about TierPoint’s Help Desk Services. Utilizing industry best practices, our team of U.S.-based, certified experts are available 24×7, providing businesses with scalable, flexible help desk services for over a decade. Reach out to us today to learn more.