The support of a well-managed IT help desk plays an integral role to the day-to-day productivity of your business. Their help not only ensures that you resolve the technology obstacles that slow down your team’s work, but it also helps your team feel valued and supported, boosts morale, and allows them to better focus on valuable work.
But running an IT help desk internally takes a considerable commitment of resources that far exceeds the ability and budget of small and midsized businesses in Tampa.
For this reason, most companies will need to outsource that duty to a managed IT service provider like LNS Solutions. But with so many competing companies making similar claims, how do you know which provider is the right choice?
In this blog we’ll explore why businesses outsource their IT help desk and what they can do to ensure that they’ve picked the right provider.
Handing over the responsibility for your IT help desk duties helps businesses solves some of the most challenging pain points associated with IT support and management. There are four major benefits to working with an outsourced help desk provider.
Managing IT staff is a unique challenge that most businesses aren’t prepared for, even if when they think they’ve got it under control. Businesses that have a small internal IT team struggle to fully understand their work or give them the direction they need to ensure make sure that they’re doing everything they can to protect your network.
Reputable MSPs back their IT help desk service with a detailed service-level agreement (SLA). This contract outlines in clear terms exactly how quickly their technicians will respond to your IT support requests, what steps they’ll take to address your issue, and how important issues are escalated to senior network engineers.
The result is a network with a guaranteed level of availability, usually above 99.99%. That level of service is difficult to achieve with just in-house resources.
IT staffing is a nightmare, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced companies in all industries struggling to find new staff. According to recent research from Gartner, 64% of business leaders say that a talent shortage is the biggest obstacle to adopting new technologies.
Finding qualified help desk technicians, reviewing their resumes and credentials, administering skill tests to check their real-world abilities, and then dealing with a high rates of turnover can drain your energy and cause significant stress.
Working with a reputable MSP eliminates those IT staffing woes. Veteran MSPs have a mature process for vetting and hiring help desk technicians, reducing your HR overhead and reliving a serious source of stress.
Running an IT help desk isn’t just about good technicians, it’s also about good technology. Modern help desk teams rely on specialized software that allows them to remotely monitor the status of your network, analyze new issues, then make required repairs, without having to disrupt your productivity.
Those software suites are expensive to purchase and difficult to learn, which makes them inaccessible to most businesses. A reputable outsourced IT help desk will have all these systems in place, along with years of experience configuring and using them. That expertise means they can hit the ground running and spare you those high capital expenses.
When you start to build an IT team, the significant costs start to add up fast.
First, there are the direct costs of your technical hires and the software you need to support them. Beyond that, there are many costs that businesses fail to budget for, like new hardware, employee training and certification costs, and dedicated office space to house your IT help desk team.
Working with an MSP consolidates all those costs into a single, flat monthly bill that includes remote IT support like the IT help desk, along with unlimited onsite support from their team of network engineers.
In some scenarios, outsourcing leads to a cost savings over running these programs in-house.
But in every case, it provides your business leaders with budgeting confidence. An IT help desk service from a reputable MSP means a predictable IT support budget that never fluctuates, no matter how much support your team needs or what type of cybersecurity incident your organizations faces.
I’ve used the term “reputable” MSP several times in this article so far, so much that it begs the question, “What is a reputable MSP”?
That’s one of the central issues that’ll have to answer when you’re evaluating potential IT services partners. Unfortunately, the MSP market has a low barrier to entry, so established providers can have a hard time standing out for the plethora of low-cost providers who making identical marketing claims.
Start with a customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey and see if they’re tracking how many of their IT tickets end with a happy end-user. If they’re not tracking CSAT, that may be a red flag that they’re not taking their service quality seriously enough.
Digging deeper there are huge variety of help desk metrics that you can inquire about. These will provide a clear picture of how effectively the MSP’s help desk is serving their clients.
For a deeper look into important IT help desk statistics, check out this great post from help desk software provider, Kaseya.
Switching MSPs is a serious business. Over months and years, the MSP will build a strong relationship with your business and team. This means not just supporting your immediate IT support needs but providing strategic guidance to your leadership as your business and technology evolve.
To ensure that an MSP is capable being a dependable long-term partner, you should make sure they have a track-record of working with clients for several years. To start, check to make sure that their reputation in your community is solid. During the MSP interview process, make a point of asking about the average length of their client engagements and dig deep into their referrals too.
The LNS Solutions team has been serving the Tampa area for decades, helping our business community streamline and upgrade their day-to-day operations with cutting-edge, reliable technology. If your company would like to outsource regular IT support to a trusted provider, we’d love to speak with you any time at (813) 393-1626.