Solution Provider Uses Social Media Conversations to Examine
Help Desk Concerns of Top IT Decision Makers
Farmington Hills, MI, January 24,
2012 – By now, almost everyone has a help desk or service
desk story to tell. Usually, it’s the bad ones people hear
about most – calling a service desk in some remote corner of the
world, being unable to communicate with the person who answers the
phone, calls being dropped, or worse yet, users being placed on
hold for what seems like an eternity. According to Logicalis,
an international provider of integrated information and
communications technology (ICT) solutions and services (http://www.us.logicalis.com/),
it’s stories like these that give even experienced CIOs and IT
managers reasons to look for alternatives for their service desk
needs.
To find out what IT pros think the pitfalls
really are with service desks, Logicalis tuned in to the social
media conversations of IT decision makers over a six-month period
from June 2011 to January 2012, and compiled a list of their top
six concerns. Then, the solution provider asked its service
desk experts how these concerns could be alleviated.
“Providing a service desk solution is not a
one-size-fits-all offering. It’s a partnership that makes it
possible to offer the highest service levels to end users without
the financial risk of building a significant in-house service desk
infrastructure on their own,” says Bob Chapp, service desk director
for Logicalis. “Creating a 24 x 7 x 365 offering that’s based on
ITIL best practices and uses best-of-breed enterprise tools to
successfully resolve hundreds of thousands of incidents a year with
a 97 percent customer satisfaction rating – that’s hard to beat
with a standalone in-house operation. Yet, even experienced
CIOs have horror stories to tell. The key to success when
partnering for a service desk solution is to choose a partner
wisely to avoid the very concerns IT pros say they’re most worried
about.”
IT Pros’ Top Service Desk
Concerns
1. Quality of
Service: Companies know that their reputation is on the
line when they trust someone else to interface with their
customers; the people doing the job are not physically located in
their building, and aren’t a member of their in-house staff.
The fear is that they don’t have a vested interest in preserving
the company’s image with clients. The solution? Engage with
service desk providers that create a branded experience that is
transparent to the end user. Choose a provider that delivers
support on a dedicated phone line, answers with the client
company’s call script, and incorporates the client’s corporate
messaging. The experience should be so seamless that the end
user never even realizes they are calling someone off-site.
2.
Cost Savings Won’t Materialize: Most companies
that do operate their own internal service desk have one that is
pretty lean. Even in sizeable organizations, it’s typical to
see a service desk manned by a small number of full-time employees,
which gives employers the impression that partnering couldn’t
improve their costs. But when employees take sick days,
vacation days or even just go to lunch, their absence is often
handled by creating rotations or pulling other employees away from
their normal positions to fill in. With a smaller staff,
these absences can cause a significant and costly problem – one
that doesn’t happen when service desks are handled by a
partner. Additionally, many companies just don’t have the
bandwidth to offer the 24/7/365 support end users want today.
Filling that need would require the organization to hire many more
full-time people, whereas with a service desk, its resources
are its people and they can be leveraged across accounts,
particularly at night and on weekends when call volumes are
lower. Want to test a partner model without fully committing?
Look for one that offers an after-hours-only service, and use it to
extend the 9-to-5 workday into a 24/7 operation.
3.
Jobs Will Be Lost: This is both true and false at
the same time. By definition, outsourcing a service does mean
that the company purchasing that service will be able to offer that
functionality with a leaner staff. But that doesn’t have to
mean dismissing those employees; in many cases, employees who once
worked as in-house service desk agents can be redeployed into new
roles in the organization. In the end, if the goal is to
offer 24/7 support, the question isn’t as much what may be lost,
but what may be gained.
4.
Service Levels: This is a valid concern, but only
if the service level agreements (SLAs) don’t specify the metrics by
which the provider will be measured. Choose an organization
that records every call so it can be referenced and reviewed in the
event a complaint is lodged. Make sure the service desk team
performs regular quality checks and that SLAs define exactly what
is expected – average answer speed, rate of dropped/abandoned
calls, how many incidents are to be resolved. Other
service-level concerns may be a matter of logistics: Where is the
provider – and more importantly – where are its service desk agents
located? Choose a service desk that has its location in the
same country as the users it will serve and has agents who speak
the same language and dialect as the client’s users or, in the case
of a multi-national client, has its location in a central location
for the company’s business with bi-lingual agents who are
completely fluent in both languages and common dialects so
communication barriers won’t present a problem.
5.
Current In-House Team is Efficient &
Effective: This may be true! Some in-house service desks
are efficient and effective. In this case, the client may
want to retain their in-house, full-time staff, but if they don’t
have a 24/7/365 offering, perhaps extend what they are already
doing well by offering their after-hours service through a
qualified partner capable of providing a transparent and branded
option. In today’s 24-hour, instant-results society,
around-the-clock access to IT support is no longer a luxury, but an
expectation. Another consideration is cost: If a company
needs to trim its IT budget, a service desk partner may be one way
to meet that requirement, offering an equally efficient and
effective help desk at a lower cost.
6. Bad Experiences
with Outsourcing in the Past: No one can guarantee that a
client won’t have a bad experience with a particular
provider. However, explicit SLAs, an experienced team, ITIL
best practices, and a low turnover rate among service desk agents
are all good signs that the company’s methodology and delivery
methods are sound. Ask for customer references and find out
how long the company retains its average customer as well – these
are good indicators of satisfaction and give prospective clients a
benchmark by which to measure the provider’s level of
expertise.
- How does Logicalis compare?
Find out by watching a short two-minute video here.
- Want to learn more? Contact
Logicalis for details.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of
integrated information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge
and expertise in communications & collaboration, data center,
and cloud computing and managed services.
Logicalis Group employs nearly 2,500 people
worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design,
specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the
needs of over 6,000 corporate and public sector customers. To
achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with
technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of
over $1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South
America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of
the leading IT and Communications solution integrators,
specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and
services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec
Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges,
with revenues of approximately $5 billion.
For more information, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/