Help desk services are among the most important IT services that a company might use. Since the average person will have a relatively limited amount of technological know-how, it is very important to provide members of a large organization with a source of on-demand expert advice. That is essentially the goal and purpose of an outsourced help desk service. Let’s go over some of the larger benefits that can be gained from such services.
1. Lower Costs
This is probably the main reason that companies choose to employ outsourced help desk services. Maintaining an in-house IT help desk is generally more expensive. Although those in-house people will have the benefit of being physically closer to the situation, they will also be more expensive. Apart from the obvious payroll expenses, there will also likely be other expenses like benefits and training costs. With an outsourced approach, you can get the service you need at a lower price. As you will see, a lot of other benefits trace back to this key factor: You can save a significant amount of money with an outsourced help desk.
2. A Customized Service Plan
Outsourced help desk support can be a much more customized way to approach the whole picture. If you are dealing with a reputable company, you should be able to work out a pricing plan that covers your needs at a reasonable rate. You can lower that rate by cutting out any specific features or services that you do not require. That kind of thing is much harder to do with an in-house team. You will pretty much be paying for a broad range of services rather than a streamlined service plan.
3. Greater Access To Information And Experience
When it comes to IT help desk support, it is very hard for one person to cover all possible problems. When you have a relatively small in-house team, that isn’t much better. That is why a help desk support team needs to have a very wide range of knowledge and experience. In most cases, an outsourced help desk will employ a larger pool of IT experts and they will consequently have a wider range of experiences. It is not really cost-effective for most companies to hire a large number of top-tier IT support people, due to the expenses involved. However, since an outsourced provider will be servicing a large number of clients, it is cost-effective for them to employ the very best experts that can be found.
4. Less Burden On Management
Here is something you might not have considered: When you go with an in-house help desk, you will have to employ people to manage that department. Apart from your actual support staff, you will need to employ and pay supervisors to oversee their work. The use of an outsourced team will definitely remove some of those management burdens. Of course, you could simply have one of your other department managers on “double duty (i.e., managing two departments at once). However, this will likely reduce their ability to do either job effectively. Outsourced help desk services can be a great way to reduce the burden on your management staff because it’s one less department that has to be managed.
5. Better Support Availability
We have discussed the need for your employees to have access to top-grade IT help desk support when it is needed. However, your customers may also need some expert advice. This is particularly true if your product is of a “high-tech” nature. This can cause a problem when you are only utilizing a small in-house team. If you go with the in-house option, the help desk will only be available during work hours. You could use remote workers to fill the gaps, but that is a shot in the dark. If those hastily-recruited remote workers are simply not good enough to help your customers effectively, you are likely to lose some business as a result. An outsourced help desk can generally offer 24-hour and 7-day-a-week support. You could maintain a 24/7 team of your own, but that is going to be a lot more expensive.
6. Access To Better IT Resources
When we are talking about the expenses associated with help desk teams, we should also talk about hardware and software. Your in-house team will definitely need up-to-date hardware and software, and it needs to be of sufficient quality to meet all your needs. This is certainly possible, but also pretty expensive.When you employ an outsourced team, you are dealing with a company that specializes in IT services. Thus, you can bet that they will have the latest and most advanced technological resources. This will include better computers, but also better servers, routers, switches, and programs. As with the costs of highly-trained labor, these costs are easier to absorb when your company specialized in that sort of thing.
Conclusion
If you are not sure about switching your help desk services, you should know that you don’t always
have to make a flat choice. You can choose to employ both an in-house and outsourced approach, using both of them only where they are needed. It can be a little trickier to pull this off, but many companies have found it to be ideal.Whether you need help desk outsourcing or any other IT-related services, PCH Technologies can help. We have all the top-level experts that you need to keep your operations on track. Don’t settle for anything less than the finest service in the industry. For more information, you can call PCH Technologies at (856) 754-7500.