Insider Information from Help Desk Experts

Help desk outsourcing has become a popular solution among enterprise organizations because of the benefits it can deliver. Smaller budgets, limited resources, increased competition, better customer experience and improved customer satisfaction are all factors forcing organizational leaders to look at outsourcing. Here are four reasons why help desk outsourcing is ideal for your enterprise organization.

1. Help desk outsourcing ensures predictable costs
With an outsourced help desk team, everything is very consistent and transparent, which makes budgeting a lot easier. Outsourcing will eliminate the need for real estate, equipment, hiring, training and management of your own help desk staff. In this way, you can measure business efficiency and success against what you are putting out. Being able to predict costs means your growth strategies can be supported without worrying about surprises that come about as a result of being inefficient.

We're excited to announce that we've been recognized as a Top Workplace for 2019 by The Hartford Courant! This award is especially important to us because it is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey. The anonymous employee survey measured several aspects of workplace culture including alignment, execution and connection, just to name a few.

Global Help Desk Services Inc. owners, Steve and Karen Wetherell, recently sat down for a Q&A discussion to talk about this award and what it means to them and their employees.

What does it mean to you to be named a top workplace in Hartford?
This award is a true testament to our efforts and recognizes that our greatest asset is our employees. When we continue to invest in our employees, we continue to provide exceptional customer service to our clients around the globe.

We're excited to announce that we have recently moved to a brand new building in Rocky Hill, CT. Global Help Desk Services, Inc. has been operating in Connecticut for the past 17 years, and we are thrilled to continue to grow our organization in this new location. Our new building  provides a unique and unifying space for our employees including a large break room, additional meeting rooms, more spacious individual desks and offices, and much more. 

Global Help Desk Services Inc. owners, Steve and Karen Wetherell, recently sat down for a Q&A discussion to talk about this new building and what it means to them and their employees:

Why did you decide to stay and grow your business operations in Connecticut?
We've been operating in Connecticut for the past 17 years, and we decided to keep our business operations here so that we could continue to provide an opportunity for growth to those that have stayed with us for all these years. Growing operations here would be an incremental growth path, compared to another state that would be a more exponential growth path where people, systems, and processes would have to be recreated or re-established from scratch. At the same time, uprooting of any business from one state to another would become very difficult.

As organizations find ways to "tighten up" their department budgets, the good news is that there are many strategies to help reduce costs without harming the department or the overall organization. The strategies you choose will vary depending on your situation and your short and long-term goals.

We invite you to watch the 1-minute video below and learn about 3 ways to reduce IT costs at your organization:

This is part two of our 2-part series on the 10 advantages of hiring an outsourced help desk partner. If you missed part one, you can click here to read the full blog.

There are many ways an outsourced help desk partner can make an organization more efficient and more productive, so it's no wonder why outsourcing help desk operations is becoming more and more popular among IT departments. Here are 5 more advantages of hiring an outsourced help desk partner:

1. Enhanced Efficiencies
Every business desires to operate like a well-oiled machine. In other words, they want to hum along smoothly and effortlessly with every component doing its part. If you have to continually deal with slow-moving parts, breakdowns, or areas that start and stop, then you will not get all the work done that you need to get done, which can and will impact your bottom line. Not only does an outsourced help support desk team relieve issues at the front-end, but it also serves as a standards bearer on the back-end. A good help desk support team will force the rest of IT to adhere to standard processes because the help desk will need to know what to do with every ticket it creates, whether it resolves the issue or has to escalate it to another support group. These standards will allow those users seeking support to have some consistency on what to expect when they seek support and the support teams will have consistency on how they interact with the help desk and respond to those users seeking further support.

This is part one of our 2-part series on the 10 advantages of hiring an outsourced help desk partner. We will be covering the first 5 advantages in this blog and be sure to subscribe, if you aren't already, so that you receive part 2 in the coming weeks.

One of the most important goals of an IT department is to help the organization create meaningful business value through better customer support, and one of the best ways the IT department can achieve this is through outsourcing its help desk operations. Not only does an outsourced help desk partner help streamline processes and communication, they also keep the department more organized with detailed records of all submitted issues. There are many ways an outsourced help desk partner can make an organization more efficient and more productive, so it's no wonder why outsourcing help desk operations is becoming more and more popular among IT departments. Here are 5 advantages of hiring an outsourced help desk partner:

1. Extended Coverage
 An outsourced help desk partner can offer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which gives you the peace of mind that there is always somebody available to help your customers. If you only have an internal team, it will be harder for you to leverage that team to handle requests "after hours" or during weekends and holidays. This can have negative implications for your team, both internally and externally, if customers are looking for support and they aren't receiving it in a timely manner.

As enterprise organizations grow in scale and size, so do requests for their internal help desk teams. These help desk requests quickly become difficult to manage as companies approach enterprise-scale user levels and issues take up valuable internal IT department time. Despite the effort these organizations put into optimizing their help desks, things don’t always go as planned, and many help desks still face challenges when trying to give internal and external customers the best possible experience. Keeping your help desk running at maximum efficiency is critical to the success of your organization and achieving both internal and external customer satisfaction. So how do you achieve this? Here are 4 ways to help you optimize your enterprise help desk.

There is significant value in hiring an outside team of help desk experts when you're looking to save time, reduce costs and improve processes. However, to truly see the value of an outsourced help desk support team, you will need to first determine your actual needs.

Watch the 2-minute video below and learn about the 4 questions you should be asking when determining your help desk outsourcing needs:

Today's IT leaders spend a significant amount of time trying to prove the value of their decisions and investments.  Maximizing your Return On Investment (ROI) depends greatly on your ability to successfully reduce costs while finding ways to more effectively manage your resources. The first place you can start is at the help desk. So, how do you maximize help desk ROI at your organization? Here are 3 ways to help you get started:

1. Develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
In order to show ROI, you will need to first determine key performance indicators (KPIs) of your help desk. KPIs are the most important measurable outcomes that indicate the success and failure of your help desk. There are industry benchmark KPIs that may be helpful, but to get more out of your investment, you will need to tailor them to match your own organizational needs and then monitor and measure them regularly. If you're looking for a some tips, you can also check out our list of the top 5 key performance indicators to track your help desk performance.

Change has always been a constant within organizations. However, in order to be successful, it's critical that your support team embraces change from the beginning. This isn't always easy to do, but with the accelerated pace of things like technological advancements and competition, embracing organizational change is becoming more important than ever before. Here are 4 ways to help your support team embrace change within your organization.

1. Listen to Your Team
You should measure the team's attitude about the change before the organization makes any changes to better understand which members of the team will embrace the change and which of them will not. Team members who prefer stability will be more likely to work with proven methods, while those who embrace change will be more enthusiastic to experiment with new methods.