Pros and Cons of Offshore Help Desk

Author: JoginderSingh | Posted: 09.12.2011

Outsourcing is the most common strategy followed these days. It is very beneficial for cutting fixed cost. Offshore help desk is commonly used business, but before outsourcing of services every business must know its merits and demerits. However, outsourcing is usually conversed in monetary terms; the affect of help desk outsourcing is much wider than that. When any process is outsourced from a business, it may affect the productivity on not only the organization of business, but also on level of working. Service desk support is a key part of customer satisfaction and retention, as a customer service resource. The likely impact of offshore help desk, for enhance or for bad, is so wide that cautious target setting and decision are very essential to a business success.

Pros

Financial influence: offshore decreases fixed costs and as a result improves return on investment.

Concentrate on key capability: offshore help desk frees up administration to spend time on fields where the business is best to add some value.

Flexible capacity: it call in quantity can differs much seasonal and other reasons. Offshore creates flexible capacity for managing these changes in quantity.

Frequently updated training: companies that specialize in help desk are well placed to keep training current.

Cons

Loss of control over training: companies may be anxious that some shades can be vanished when training is outsourced.

Lack of concern for customers: It can be the primary interaction with the client and if representatives are not expert enough, then it can return bad response on the business.

Remote personnel: although outsourcing can take benefit of universal abilities, a more neighboring touch can evades cultural differences.

In spite of having these negatives, it should not convert company against outsourcing of help desk because the advantages are still justifiable. Identifying the probable negatives provide the first step toward handling and removing the hindrances to the successful outsourcing customer support services. To put emphasis on the positive that is, understand the advantages of help desk outsourcing without overcoming the drawbacks. The three components that should be considered to plan a successful help desk process:

Identify the primary mission: An offshore service desk should have one of three primary missions that are to offer inner technology support, to offer support for business to business users, or to offer support for customers.

Set computable targets: This can begin with monetary targets such as return on investment, but it also includes service targets. It may comprise of customer satisfaction, retention, average length of call and response time.

Define the help desk search: The targets and mission define the wider mission and particular target of offshore process. These explanations should then form the origin of the search for a help desk offshore provider. Different companies may provide different importance on inner, customer support and past performance on related data can form a valuable base for evaluating different companies.

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