5 Benefits of Technical Support Outsourcing
When businesses have limited resources, are growing too swiftly, or don’t have access to the right skills and experience, technical support can quickly become a major issue. Technical support is important to every business because it involves customers’ problems, resolving issues, improving products and services, and building a stronger relationship with customers. This is why businesses that struggle with offering good technical support should look into outsourcing. Outsourcing technical support gives customers access to quick and simple resolutions across multiple channels.
Outsourced tech support is the practice of hiring an outside vendor to do a business’ technical support, answering customer questions, and troubleshooting problems with a business’ product or service. In recent years, technical support outsourcing has seen extraordinary growth. In fact, the technical support outsourcing market is expected to grow by $11 billion during 2020-2024. This is mainly due to access to highly skilled support agents in regions with desirable salary brackets.
However, many businesses don’t quite understand the practice of technical support outsourcing and may get confused between tech support and a help desk. It is important for effective tech support outsourcing to understand exactly what is involved and the difference between the two departments.
The Difference Between a Help Desk and Technical Support
To understand the difference between a help desk vs technical support, it is essential to have a good definition of both.
In a business, both the help desk and technical support teams have a distinct role. While technical support aims to resolve the technical issues of customers, often with the help of other IT support teams, such as application support developer experts, a help desk is more focused on addressing customer queries and enhancing the customer experience. But these teams often work hand in hand. The global technical support outsourcing market increasingly focuses on grabbing business opportunities from the helpdesk segment as it is expected to account for the largest market share by 2022.
Both of these teams are very important within a business. And therefore, if a company does not have access to the right resources, it should opt to outsource these functions. Looking for experienced accounting software developer or RoR developer to manage your app? Contact us and hire programmers here and now!
The Challenges of Technical Support Outsourcing
While tech and software support outsourcing comes with a lot of benefits, it doesn’t come without drawbacks. Let’s explore some problems businesses could face when outsourcing their tech support team:
- Intellectual property security risks
Because a third-party company is working with important data, businesses and their customers can be left vulnerable to security risks and data breaches.
- Reduced quality control
When businesses outsource, the tech support is no longer handled in-house and they have virtually no control over the quality of service provided. Businesses are also not responsible for onboarding new agents. This means they have no idea if they’re properly trained for the job or not.
- Less direct contact with customers
Communicating through a third party gives businesses the opportunity to get immediate feedback from their customers. This can remove them from the customer relationship and can even lead to a loss of trust from customers.
Even though there are some drawbacks to making use of an outsourcing tech support solution, most of them are easy to overcome. The key is to work with a reputable outsourced partner and to communicate goals and objectives early on in the partnership.
The Benefits of Technical Support Outsourcing
It is very useful for businesses to understand both the pros and cons of outsourcing technical support. Here are some of the benefits involved:
- Reduced costs
When a business hires multiple in-house IT experts to provide support, they have to pay the overhead for the space and equipment they need to do their job. This can add up to thousands of dollars a year. When they outsource their technical support, they don’t have to pay nearly as much. They won’t need the additional office space or equipment. They also won’t need to run up a large bill on salaries every year. Instead, they only pay for the support that fits their specific needs. In fact, the entire market is driven by the increasing need for cost-effective solutions.
- Access to experience
Technical support can be a delicate activity. Employees of outsource tech support companies have typically gone through expert training to cope with it and have accumulated major experience of handling different situations across diverse industries. As a result, businesses get access to experienced workers that bring skill and knowledge to their operations.
- Flexibility in scaling
Outsourcing IT technical support allows businesses to grow or scale down their teams when necessary. In this way, they can grow their business at any time without having to worry about finding the right talent or resources.
- More time on focusing on core business
Most businesses don’t focus on IT support but instead, work on aspects like product innovation. So, outsourcing their technical support makes sense. Outsourcing technical support allows them to focus on their primary product and on what they do best. Outsourcing support also allows business agents to deal with daily technical concerns and customer interactions instead.
- Tech advances speed up, not slow down
A full-service outsourced tech support company typically uses state-of-the-art technology to work as effectively as possible, through their preferred channels, in the shortest amount of time.
There are many ways in how technical support outsourcing may benefit your business. Get in touch!
Different Levels of Technical Support
Breaking technical support into three levels allows businesses to apply the best team or specialist. The three levels can be broken down as follows:
Technical Support L1 (or Tier 1)
Level 1 usually involves simple customer requests that demand limited IT support. This type of support is usually provided by IT support teams with the least experience, less understanding of technical issues, and limited access to business information.
When businesses want to create a Level 1 support team, they should pick junior level technical support specialists who can:
- Attend to calls
- Collect customer data
- Respond to user communication
- Conduct basic troubleshooting
- Offer product information
- Solve common problems
Technical Support L2 (or Tier 2)
Level 2 escalates into more complex support problems. Level 2 technicians review the work order from Level 1 specialists to determine how much support was provided, the issue, and how long the customer has worked with the Level 1 agent.
Level 2 technicians then communicate with the customer for an in-depth analysis of the query before providing a solution. If a solution is not immediately available, the query may move to Level 3 support.
Technical Support L3 (or Tier 3)
Level 3 utilizes subject matter experts that can figure out some of the toughest customer requirements. This level of support typically requires experts in different subject matters. These experts have access to the highest level of information and can provide solutions for a wide variety of technical problems.
The Typical Tasks Level 1 to 3 Professionals Can Do
The type of expert businesses require may vary depending on the product and service they provide, the size of their business, and the number of clients they have. Here are examples of resumes for the different levels of specialists:
Junior Technical Support Specialist
Mid-level Technical Support Specialist
Senior Technical Support Specialist
Mobilunity as a Reliable Tech Support Specialists Provider in Ukraine
Mobilunity is a highly recognized outsourcing company in Ukraine. We have over 10 years of experience providing outsourcing technical support services for businesses, big and small, worldwide.
Our experts at Mobilunity hire specialized candidates to fast and use time-tested methods to recruit the best-matching workers for clients. Hire CakePHP developers, VR programmer or Microsoft Dynamics CRM consultant for your project with us. Trust Mobilunity for quality programming at the best rates!
Over the years, we have worked with many satisfied clients around the world, including Paidy (Japan), CamptoCamp (Switzerland), 3e Joueur (Canada), ZenChef (France), and DNest (Spain).
At Mobilunity, we always aim to enhance the operations of businesses worldwide. To do this, our team follows the effective process below:
- We choose top candidates that suit our clients’ ideal candidate profiles.
- We ensure all our workers are set up with the right tools for maximum productivity.
- We ensure contractual obligations are always met and that clients’ requirements are met throughout the process.
Find out more about:
- How to hire developers in Spain?
Frequently Asked Questions About Tech Support Outsourcing:
There are a few important questions to ask when wanting to make use of tech support outsourcing. Here, we take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions and answer them effortlessly.
Q: What are the skills required for a technical support specialist?
Successful technical support specialists have various skills and qualifications to help them fulfill their required duties. Some of the skills to look out for in this position include:
- Network design and implementation
- Outstanding knowledge of software maintenance
- Exceptional problem solving and analytical skills
- Load balancing abilities
- Ability to work with different databases
- Knowledge of process improvement
- Software performance modification ability
- Excellent communication skills
- Ability to work with and lead a team
- Set a budget and make sure it is aligned with the vendor’s rates
- Do thorough research and find reviews and feedback from previous clients
- Communicate requirements, goals, and visions early on to ensure both parties are aligned and can produce the best results
Q: How to pick the best technical support outsourcing company?
While finding a good tech support company isn’t always easy, there are plenty of things to look for to ensure that the vendor you choose is the one that is right for you. Here are a few points to consider:
Q: How do you manage successful tech support outsourcing?
For many businesses, IT tech support outsourcing is a big step. If done right, it can save a business money, provide expert skills and experience in the field of customer support and help a business grow. However, it can lead to businesses losing customers and, ultimately, their reliability if done wrong.
The most important part of outsourcing tech support is finding experienced and effective technical support outsourcing companies. The right partner offers guidance from the start, access highly skilled specialists, recruit the perfect candidates, and create a comfortable working environment for everyone.
On the other hand, it is the responsibility of the business or client to offer the best internal tools and resources, provide comprehensive training around its goals and needs, and put the right security measures in place.
Do you need tech support outsourcing specialists for your project? Get in touch with Mobilunity! Find the perfect team effortlessly!
All salaries and prices mentioned within the article are approximate NET numbers based on the research done by our in-house Recruitment Team. Please use these numbers as a guide for comparison purposes only and feel free to use the contact form to inquire on the specific cost of the talent according to your vacancy requirements and chosen model of engagement.
