Help Desk Outsourcing

A help desk will check and troubleshoot the problems occurring in computer and the similar products. A team well informed in the information technology will attend the customer calls and help them by finding, analyzing and eliminating common problems in their computer applications. Outsourcing means to transfer a previously handled in-house business function to an external provider or a third party. This transfer of an organizational function will also be done to a third party placed in a foreign country and is called as offshore outsourcing.

Corporate companies will have their own in-house help desk that is responsible for checking and troubleshooting the problems occurring in computer and the similar products and applications being used in the company. But the new trend grew in the recent years is help desk outsourcing. That is to give the organizational functions to the outside help desks. The help desk outsourcing has its own limitations, but it is preferred by many, if not all, companies. The outsourcing will definitely bring measurable benefits to some companies. The main benefit of the help desk outsourcing is that the functions can be given to a specialist and focused provider.

Corporate companies know the necessity and importance of an in-house help desk. It is well-known that a standard in-house help desk can make the working of the company smooth and in meeting deadlines. It is very much necessary to keep a well-informed in-house help desk. Poor provision for the help desk will adversely affect the firm. It would be difficult for the in-house help desk to perform the work load every time. In such instance the necessity of depending of outsourcing help desk will arise.

The help desk does the following tasks:

• They do customer services like email and telephone abilities to respond to the customers? needs.
• Troubleshooting by gathering information, evaluating and providing solutions.
• With their knowledge on the overall systems they can do system maintenance, supporting workstation and perform security services. As the help desk needs to learn the new technology as soon as it is invented, they will know the very recent developments in the technology. That helps them to perform tougher tasks.
• With their knowledge to present the technical information which if recruiting the most unhelpful people in the world and sitting them at the front line, on our service desks! I don’t go along with this view. As someone who used to have direct responsibility for recruiting service desk staff, I believe we staff the desk with bright, enthusiastic and motivated people. So where does it all go wrong from there?

  Firstly, front line support is largely a thankless task. It takes a special kind of person to really do it justice. Resilience is certainly imperative, and it’s something most support people internalise and continue to build up lashings of as a consummation of the day-to-day perils of being in the front line.

  However, being a good support person needs more than resilience. There are a number of very important factors that will help you in your pursuit of great staff and ultimately an acclaimed service desk.

  Lets face it; the staff we recruit can’t uniformly be ‘useless.’ I concede that we don’t always get it right but why is it that we frequently hear such utterances about our staff? As IT managers, if we recruited them, we must surely have chosen them in preference to other hopefuls because they demonstrated an appropriate level of skill, common sense and probably because we quite liked them. What happened in the meantime? Does the very act of working on the service desk debilitate your skills?

  I would suggest not! I was a service desk manager for many years and I am passionate about service desks. For me, there is a formula for creating a great team and it requires a lot more that making sound staffing choices and being a good manager.

  The issue is habitual in many organisations. Let’s face it - as either a stakeholder or user of a service desk, we tend to expect a lot and give very little. I know the old adage ‘its better to give than to receive’ but the poor old service desk would have to be wearing their underpants on the outside of their clothes to have any sort of chance of getting it right!

  The key is senior management commitment and passionate line management. I know, I know…You’ve heard it all before, but let’s face it if you don’t choose the right people, pay them the right salary, train them, give them the correct tools for the job and most importantly provide them with the autonomy they need, how can they ever provide the kind of service your users expect? Choose the right people!

  Let’s be honest, for a start, we sometimes pick the wrong people in the first place - fledgling graduates, people looking to get into IT or temporary staff. Does that ring any bells? For me it sets off the chimes of despair! Really good service desk staff need a whole range of skills, many of which cannot be internalised by ‘just anyone!’

  We want them to be good communicators, active listeners, have excellent troubleshooting skills and be able to manage our incidents and requests from start to end. That’s a formidable set of requirements. Our expectations are high; we need to make sure we don’t choose people who have only a small chance off satisfying those prerequisites.

  So, why not just choose good people? Well, there are two reasons. Very often, a role on a service desk is not highly valued. It is often viewed as a ‘necessary evil’ – something to be endured, a first step into the more technically skilled and rewarding 2nd and 3rd line support roles. The result is that most people don’t want to sit on a service desk for any great period of time. Why? Well, because they expect it will get boring and fundamentally that kind of role is never venerated. For most people that’s not going to ‘cut the mustard’ when they are trying to establish a sound career path.

  Pay them appropriately

  The second reason that we sometimes get the wrong people is that many organisations don’t pay their Service Desk staff well enough. Good service desk staff should be commanding the same salaries as you pay your desktop engineers or other 2nd line internal support teams. If you start to pay the right salaries, you get good people and also send a very clear message to your users and to other support staff; the service desk people are at least as important as they are!

  Support tools and technologies

  My third real annoyance about the way we treat our service desk staff is that frequently we don’t give them the tools to do the job. A computer and telephone does not a service desk person make! You expect them to be able to answer the phone promptly and courteously, understand and translate your request, prioritise it appropriately, resolve it and if not send it to someone who can, and quickly. Throughout this process you want regular updates, an escalation source if it doesn’t go to plan and before it’s resolved (in a timely fashion) you want to be able to accede suitable closure. Furthermore, where the incident has been significant, you expect some assurance that someone is going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

  Do you still think the telephone, the PC and a paper file of scribbled hints and tips will avow the service desk to manage that lot? Again, not without the underpants!

  In reality a good service desk needs the correct level of investment. I mean tools, information, business knowledge, and the correct level of technology. Our service desk staff may not need to be technical gurus but we do expect a certain level of skill because, as well as being able to resolve some incidents, it gives the service desk a fighting chance of understanding a user request and elucidating it into something meaningful so that someone else can resolve it.

  As users of the service desk we also expect them to know who we are and not ask us the same ten questions each time we call for a simple request. Give them a good customer database, preferably a configuration management database to refer to, so they will be able to obtain this information, understand who you are, what you do, what technologies you use and how quickly you need to get your issue resolved.

  In addition, if you want a good first time fix rate, you need to provide knowledge of the requests and incidents your service desk receives as well as mechanisms that allow them all a consistent ability to affect a resolution. Diagnostic scripts, frequently asked questions (FAQ’s), a ‘known error’ database and diagnostic tools are also excellent ways to help in elevating that first time fix rate.

  Training

  Make sure that as well as the technical skills that they may need that they know your business. I don’t mean those limited snatches of information retained from their induction day; they spent most of that longing for the free buffet and wondering when the Chief Exec was going to stop extolling the virtues of the company. I mean get them involved in your initiatives and projects, let them test your new applications, train them to use the most critical systems, make sure they spend some time with your vital business functions and make this an ongoing activity.

  Respect

  Give them some! A great way to allow your desk staff to earn it is simple. Make sure that key people in each department and your senior mangers are obliged to spend at least one day a year on your desk. Thereafter they will hold your staff in high esteem. Believe me; nothing sharpens the mind to the plight of the service desk like the experience of