PC Desktop Support Services

The Cost Advantages of Help Desk Call Center Outsourcing
Progent's Help Desk outsourcing and co-sourcing services offer significant business benefits in comparison to maintaining a Help Desk Call Center run exclusively by internal IT personnel. Some of the benefits of outsourcing, such as improved computer uptime, obviously contribute to productivity but are not easy to assess precisely in dollars and cents. Other issues, like internal salaries compared to per-minute billing for external Help Desk Call Center services, can be deceptive at first sight. This comparison will clarify the major cost/benefit issues related to choosing an internal or an outsourced Help Desk Call Center.

If you currently have an in-house Help Desk, you may have to make a decision whether you ought to add people to your IT service group or outsource Help Desk Call Center services. You could arrive at this point due to a number of common situations. Examples include:

• Business expansion is swamping your Help Desk Call Center
• One of your Help Desk support staff has taken another job
• You are starting up an additional branch in a different city
• Work-from-Home users have multiplied Help Desk call volume and created different sorts of support issues
• Your Help Desk team members are required for helping with operational IT projects

The Cost of an Internal Help Desk Employee
It's tempting but unrealistic to compare the raw salaries of internal personnel with the granular by-the-minute costs of an outside Help Desk team. Although typical costs for an in-house Level 1 IT support worker differ from city to city (e.g., Atlanta vs. New York), most regions in the United States fall into this range:

• Average Salary for Level 1 Technician: $45,000-$65,000
• Taxes, Benefits, PTO: $18,000-$26,000
• Hardware Costs: $2,000
• Software Licensing: $1,000-$4,000
• Office Space, Supplies, Furnishings, Utilities: $4,000-$10,000
• Ongoing Education: $1,000
• Total: $71,000 - $108,000

In order to make a realistic comparison between the business value of an internal Call Center vs. Progent's external Help Desk Call Center services, the costs of Progent's services should be looked at against the benefits. Items to consider include:

• Progent bills Help Desk customers for service on a per-minute basis and at a discount: Average cost to Progent customers for outsourced Level 1 Help Desk support services begin at about $18 for each user per month. Granular pricing means utilization is essentially 100%. You are only charged for services received. Salaried internal employees occasionally have dead time that you pay for.
• Progent can provide extended hours service: Progent's regular service availability is 14 hours on weekdays. 24x7 service programs are optional. Internally staffed Help Desk Call Centers are typically operational only for normal working hours. This can impact productivity if major problems arise during off hours. Also, exfiltration attacks like ransomware are typically activated during weekends when network support teams are thinly staffed.
• Progent's Help Desk scales easily: Recruiting new internal technical employees could take weeks or months. By tapping into Progent's extensive team of technical support professionals you can right size your Help Desk capacity on demand. You don't have to fret about filling in for technicians calling in sick, attracting new IT support staff to handle increased demand or to replace workers who leave, or cutting back your permanent internal IT staff if business slows. You can easily adjust to business cycles associated with your market or reflective of the economy in general.
• Guaranteed responsiveness: Progent offers SLAs to ensure that support calls are addressed quickly. In-house Help Desk Call Center groups have no real substitute for an SLA.
• Breadth of IT expertise: Progent has been delivering online IT support for more than two deades. Progent's technical support professionals are familiar with a wide range of advanced as well as old generation technologies deployed in a variety of industries. This range of skills enables Progent to save time and money by delivering fast fixes to issues that could otherwise be shuttled to a higher and more costly support level. In our quickly evolving IT landscape, it is tough on the wallet when newer products and technologies have to be learned on your dime. In addition, Progent's expertise makes it possible to anticipate and fix looming technical issues before they have a chance to impact workflow.
• Access to subject matter experts: Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing services also provide fast access to Progent's pool of SMEs to deliver fast solutions to Level 2 and Level 3 technical issues that are beyond the scope of most Level 1 Help Desk techs. Progent's ability to assign the appropriate engineer for an advanced problem can minimize costly downtime.
• Enterprise-class secure multi-tenant ticketing and monitoring system: Progent safely shares enterprise-class service automation software that permits Progent and customers to create and monitor IT trouble tickets, assign responsibility, show the status of issues, document activity, and produce management analytics.
• Help Desk Call Center co-management shares the workload: Progent's Co-sourced Help Desk Call Center service transparently shares service requests between a client's internal IT staff and Progent's nationwide roster of service techs and subject matter experts. You specify the way trouble tickets are allocated, but Progent usually deals with Level 1 and Level 3 issues. The Help Desk software seamlessly manages creation, escalation, tracking, and reporting. The co-sourcing model permits your internal techs to deliver hands-on assistance when situations call for it and also facilitates as-needed expansion for remote help.
• Let your internal network service team concentrate on strategic aspects of your business: Your in-house network service group knows more about your business than any external service organization. Using Progent's Help Desk outsourcing services liberates these valuable resources from being consumed by Level 1 support services like configuring work-at-home routers and gives them the opportunity to work on marshalling technology to provide strategic advantage.

Learn More about Progent's Help Desk Outsourcing and Co-sourcing Services
To learn more about Progent's Help Desk Call Center Outsourcing and Co-sourcing services, visit Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing and co-sourcing services. To find out signing up for Progent's Help Desk service programs, call 800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.