Additionally, the people who call into the help desk often times call under duress. Something broke, hence they are not happy.
The combination of those circumstances often times lead to serious discussions within a company whether or not the IT Help Desk needs to be kept in house or should be outsourced.
Some of the considerations which are tossed around as part of the decision making progress are:
- Can the company justify a dedicated help desk staff?
- Can the company staff its help desk for peak demand?
- Should the help desk be available 24 by 7 or limited to workweek hours?
- Is the available In House IT personnel capable of handling customer service calls or might they feel that held desk duties take them away from their dedicated tasks, leading to a slip in performance?
- Does the company have the requisite management in place to make its IT Help Desk an asset ?
- Can adequate resources be made available so that the IT Help Desk stays up to date with technology trends?
- Is there a structure available which ensure that proper training can be given to the personnel?
- Can the compensation be structured in such a way that employee retention is feasible?
- Does the company have the space and equipment to allocate towards building a Class "A" Help Desk?
A lot of companies realize, once they do the case review, that it would make a whole lot of sense to outsource the IT Help Desk. Yet..they keep it in House because of mainly one concern.
C level executives sometimes like to hold on to non mission critical departments because they feel that they are part of the overall corporate culture. They want to maintain the same level of standards and excellence throughout the organization.
This of course makes perfect sense.
What corporations have to realize though is that outsourcing their Help Desk does represent an opportunity to build a better operation. Outsourcing Help Desk functions should not be just an exercise in cost cutting...it should be a concerted effort to improve upon the existing infrastructure and client relationships.
It of course does take some effort to strategically set out to build a better external Help Desk. The effort though will be well worth the rewards.
Outsourcing the Help Desk, done properly, should deliver on improving the following Key Performance Indicators:
- Shift ongoing CapEx spent to OpEx Spent
- Reduce overall spent allocated towards IT Help Desk Operations
- Upgrade IT Help Desk Capabilities, make it available during off hours and/or weekends
- Utilize the Help Desk for both B2B and B2C service needs
- Continued process of Quality Improvement
- Continued build of Support Library , building up documentation
- Continuous and improved feedback of problems into the IT Department to develop better functionality
Every organization has its own requirements. Generally speaking though the above KPI's are universally applicable to build a better IT Help Desk.
At the end of the day the most important issue is customer satisfaction.
If done right an outsourced IT Held Desk will be able to deliver on that performance indicator...and this should be the most important consideration when it comes to outsourcing an IT Help Desk.