4 Ways an Outsourced IT Help Desk Delivers a Positive ROI

Outsourcing any kind of business operation is a decision that involves careful consideration and evaluation for most organizations. When it comes to the IT help desk, businesses typically start with managing it in-house and think about outsourcing once they experience a significant increase in the volume of support requests, or in the cost of maintaining the in-house help desk. At this juncture, outsourced support services appear to be a cost-effective solution.

However, Calance teams have noted that several organizations still stay on the fence about deploying an outsourced IT help desk. For them, the cost reductions do not seem to outweigh the ‘perceived’ uncertainty and effort that comes with outsourcing. 

In an effort to help organizations perform better cost-benefit analysis and help them make an informed decision, our team shares the four key benefits of outsourcing IT support, and how it can deliver positive ROI.

Reduce Operational Costs

Organizations have to bear a significant cost when it comes to ensuring that employees can leverage all IT solutions to their full potential, and be productive and efficient at their jobs. 

These costs can include:

• Hiring and retaining full-time employees to manage an internal IT help desk
• Training help desk employees, and keeping them updated on the latest help desk tools and best practices
• Licensing any help desk software
• In the absence of a formal internal IT help desk, there is the opportunity cost of regular employees spending time and effort in helping others in their team solve IT issues instead of focusing on their core role

However, once you decide to outsource your IT help desk, the most tangible ROI comes in the form of reducing the above costs and eliminating some altogether. 

At the outset, a dedicated outsourced IT help desk takes over all support conversations and allows your employees to refocus their time and effort on their original job role.

Next, an outsourced IT support team can  generate significant cost savings by:

• Eliminating hiring, retaining, and training costs: With an outsourced team, your IT help desk costs are calculated as per the custom contract you have with your service provider. This is either on a per-call, per-minute, per-agent, or per-user basis or a combination of a monthly flat fee plus some variable cost. Essentially you pay only for the service you use and do not have to worry about hiring, training, or retaining full-time employees. 
• Shared resources: Most outsourced IT help desk providers optimize their resources by operating on a shared resources model i.e. the same set of help desk agents could be handling support operations for two or more client organizations. This sharing of resources is done keeping in mind the expected call volumes and coverage/availability requirements of the different clients. Now, this means that your organization is only engaging a portion of the resources instead of the full resource, and hence you can engage an outsourced team at a fraction of the cost of having an internal help desk.

Easily Scale Up Help Desk Operations

Organizations have learned to quickly adopt new technologies and ways of working to keep up with ever-evolving market conditions. This could mean upgrading to new devices at work, adding a new tool or software to your tech stack, or even starting operations in a new location. 

In all of these scenarios, a knowledgeable and helpful IT support desk is critical for success. New devices will mean your employees have new issues and queries about how to use them. A new location can mean more support queries, or require help desk availability in a different timezone.

With an internal IT help desk, you will have to invest time and money in training your support personnel or hiring new people to meet your new requirements. Additionally, the organization’s focus is split between rolling out the new changes and preparing the help desk to service the new issues and queries that will come up as a result of these changes. 

However, outsourced IT support services deliver ROI in the form of on-demand scalability. Adopting a new SaaS platform, updating to new devices, or just having more agents on the help desk to handle a spike in support calls - the outsourced help desk can manage it all. 

• More agents can be added to your help desk to handle the increase in support calls as you expand operations
• Agents can be trained on new tools and devices quickly and efficiently, and without a heavy time and resource involvement from your internal teams
• New agents can be assigned to your organization and made available in the new time zone that you require

All of this can be delivered with a swift turn-around time because an outsourced IT help desk provider has the expertise and resources ready to be deployed as and when you need them. 

Increase Employee Productivity and Satisfaction

From a faulty device, to getting locked out of an account, to not knowing how to achieve a particular task in a given software, technical challenges are ubiquitous in the professional setting. However, repeatedly encountering these issues and not having access to a reliable support team can be a major hindrance for your teams to get the work done. Unexpected technical disruptions and delayed resolution of issues can severely impact the productivity of your teams, restricting their ability to innovate on new ideas. 

A knowledgeable, reliable and accessible IT help desk team can significantly improve the performance of your employees by minimizing disruptions in their work.

In other words, a high-performing IT help desk can deliver emotional ROI in the following ways:

• Easy accessibility, high response rates, and high resolution rates at the IT help desk can assure your employees that help is available when they need it, reducing the initial frustration. They also do not spend time and effort trying to troubleshoot the issue themselves, which might lead to losing precious time and creating further challenges.
• The quality of support conversations also plays a key role in how employees perceive the issue they are dealing with, and their emotional response to it. A patient, knowledgeable support agent with good listening skills can successfully resolve the issue on the call, or reassure the employee about when their issue will be solved. This helps them reduce negative emotions and get back to a more productive state of mind.

Independent surveys that monitor support calls and seek feedback from employees can help you determine how your teams feel about the outsourced IT support services, and whether you are receiving the emotional ROI. 

Refocus Time and Effort on Core Business Activities

Managing a high-performing internal help desk can be time, effort, and cost-intensive for a lot of organizations. The hiring and training requirements aside, there is also a need for planning, managing and efficiently running a whole department that takes up a considerable part of the operational budget. 

However, outsourcing the IT help desk not only reduces the cost commitments but also drastically cuts down on the time and effort your organization needs to spend on ensuring high-quality help desk performance. Once you onboard an outsourced service provider, your involvement is limited largely to a few aspects:

• Defining the SLAs that you need the outsourced provider to deliver on
• Managing the transition from your internal to the outsourced help desk team, or onboarding the outsourced team in a scenario where no help desk existed before
• Finally, once the outsourced team takes over, you can be assured of a committed and capable IT help desk where your organization is only involved in:
  • Overseeing monthly help desk performance 
  • Keeping the outsourced team updated on any new changes in your IT environment

This reduced involvement means that teams previously engaged with the help desk or in informal support activities can reclaim their time. They can engage in more value-added activities and focus on core business processes to drive growth. 

As you can see, investing in outsourced IT help desk services doesn’t just deliver ROI in the form of reduced costs. While the financial ROI is the most straightforward one to measure, there are key benefits of outsourcing IT support that is realized in the form of scalability, productivity, and freeing up time and resources for key business activities. 

It is important to note that the ROI outlined here is heavily contingent on the quality of service and level of performance of the outsourced help desk provider that you choose. In order to make this process easier for decision-makers, we have created a list of the four major challenges to outsourcing IT help desk support and how to resolve them. 

At Calance, we are committed to learning about your specific requirements and technical systems, as well as your organizational culture in order to provide customized solutions and expert support.

Wish to know how Calance can support your growing IT help desk needs?