In an ideal scenario, your MSP could keep things going so well for your clients that they never had to ask for assistance. We don’t live in a perfect world, of course. Furthermore, regardless of how effective your MSP is, you may occasionally need to offer customer support. Here’s where having a top-notch MSP help desk can really make a difference.
What is an MSP help desk?
A system known as an MSP help desk with rmm tools enables clients to contact their MSP when they require assistance with an IT issue. Help desk services are your customers’ first point of call when something goes wrong and they need your assistance to fix it.
Even though a lot of MSPs use in-house help desks to troubleshoot basic needs and coordinate the work of their technicians, MSP help desk outsourcing has grown to be a significant sub-niche in the sector. Some MSPs prefer to outsource the help desk so that their staff may devote all of their attention to promptly attending to clients’ needs and supporting them in their strategic digital transformation initiatives.
MSP help desk vs. Service desk
Within the MSP industry, the terms “help desk” and “service desk” are occasionally used interchangeably. Nonetheless, these essentially outline two distinct roles, either of which can be advantageous to your clients.
Help desk
Most people typically associate IT assistance with a help desk. The MSP assists with anything from troubleshooting malfunctioning equipment to responding to client requests for IT problems and app fixes. Assistance desks are reactionary. They don’t interact with the clients. They wait for customers to contact them with problems before determining the best course of action for fixing them.
Service desk
While they operate similarly to help tasks, service tasks are typically more proactive. Rather than waiting for clients to contact them with an IT issue, the service desk actively works to keep client systems, hard drives, and soft drives up to date. This approach, along with an efficient service desk, can reduce the quantity of assistance requests that clients must send.
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Why would businesses want an MSP help desk?
There are many noteworthy advantages to using an MSP help desk, especially for businesses who use MSP help desk outsourcing.
24/7 support
For your clients, a managed help desk provides round-the-clock service. Regardless of when they encounter a problem, they will be able to contact someone who can assist them in determining the appropriate steps to solve their issue. Certain cases and issues may be resolved without the need for direct intervention from your own IT staff. This might be especially useful if your clients are spread out over multiple time zones.
Reduced admin tasks for IT team
For IT teams, MSP help desk labor can grow to be a substantial administrative burden. Rather than emphasizing cutting-edge activities like machine learning and cloud computing, they spend a lot of time guiding clients through fundamental troubleshooting tasks. While crucial and helpful, tending to your clients’ fundamental needs can ultimately hinder your team’s capacity to engage in higher-value activities. An outsourced MSP help desk shifts the attention of your team back to actively enhancing clients’ technology usage to generate greater value.
Lower costs
Developing existing employees to handle a help desk might drive up expenses for your company, particularly if you need to provide suitable tools and resources for that particular role. When a skilled IT technician is assigned to this role, they lose out on income from time they should be spending on more valuable activities. Additionally, entry-level laborers frequently experience high turnover, which results in ongoing expenses for staffing and training. For this reason, MSP assistance with sourcing is frequently the more expensive option.
Lower call volume
In the end, a well-run help desk with knowledgeable employees can reduce overall call volume while also speeding up call resolution times. Rapid issue detection and resolution reduces the amount of time clients spend on the phone and lessens the likelihood that they will need to make many phone calls in order to successfully resolve the issue. This reduces expenses and frees up more time for the technicians of an MSP.
Scalability
Help desk tasks for MSPs that are outsourced can vary in size depending on the demands of the MSP’s clients. In this manner, MSPs can avoid worrying about hiring more personnel during times when they may have a higher than typical call volume. This degree of flexibility enables MSPs to maintain help desk expenses at a more controllable level.
Support for emergencies
Some events, such a natural disaster, may affect or restrict a house help dog’s abilities. External help desks offer an additional layer of assistance, enabling managed services providers (MSPs) to offer round-the-clock support and oversight regardless of any unforeseen circumstances.
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How do you start an MSP help desk business?
There is a sizable market for MSP help desk businesses given the level of value that they may obtain from outsourcing help desk tasks. Whether you choose to launch your own MSP help desk business or optimize an internal help desk, adhering to these guidelines should be a top priority.
Choose your service offerings
Identifying the services you will offer through your help desk is the first step. A precisely defined scope of operations will guarantee that your help desk can offer clients efficient services and determine whether they are able to address the issue on their own.
Selecting your service offerings will lay the groundwork for developing a workflow that outlines how you will respond to various support requests. Make sure you assess service providers in a way that will allow your team to manage the workload.
Hire and train
To manage your help desk, you will need to hire and educate an adequate number of support engineers. Remember that to offer 24/7 services, you will probably need to staff your company with at least eight engineers. Because of this, the majority of MSP help desks first restrict their hours of availability before progressively scaling up in response to overall client demand and scheduling requirements.
All MSP help desk hires, whether they are hiring new employees or utilizing current workers, will require training on how to use any specialized software for your operations as well as on your defined help desk procedures and effective problem-solving techniques for the issues they will be handling.
Additionally, help desk employees must receive training on effective communication and client interaction techniques. When dealing with a disgruntled customer, especially when speaking with them on the phone, a composed and professional demeanour can make all the difference.
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Create a schedule
The schedule of an MSP support desk should be designed with its clients’ needs in mind. The bulk of your help desk requests will come in during your clients’ regular business hours, so take into consideration their schedule.
Initially, ensure that your help desk is fully staffed and operational throughout business hours, as this is when the majority of your clients are most likely to want assistance. If you have a few clients that are located in different time zones or who could require overnight assistance, make sure that at least one employee is available during those hours.
As time passes, you can (and should) modify your schedule in accordance with your needs based on when you require support. Availability around-the-clock isn’t always required. However, making sure you have enough engineers on hand to assist during those peak support periods should always come first.
Develop a ticketing system
You may track and manage each customer support request using the MSP help desk tracking system. Every form documents the assistance needed and the steps taken by your team to address the problem. The ticket stays open until the problem has been effectively resolved.
A ticking system that is successful depends on logical structure and clear labelling. For easier research and analysis, ticks can be labelled with a variety of attributes (such as the type of problem or the client’s industry). Additionally, a priority level for the ticks should be determined by the severity of the issue, the number of affected users or services, and the time sensitivity.
Appropriate language and importance Setting up alerts will guarantee that tickets are quickly assigned to the appropriate engineers, enabling you to address problems in a way that pleases your clients.
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Create a knowledge base
When knowledge is shared, it becomes far more powerful for each individual engineer. A knowledge base enables your team to expand their expertise and experience across a range of IT issues.
Knowledge-based articles function as a “how to” reference point that your team may utilize to direct their actions when they assist clients in resolving recurring problems. Your knowledge base can be very helpful in educating new hires about procedures and suggested actions.
Ideally, you want to use a web-based or cloud-based knowledge base, since this will enable your engineers to access the information they need from anywhere, including when working remotely.
Analyse your progress
Always consider your MSP assistance desk to be a work in progress. Frequent collection and analysis of task metrics can assist you in identifying areas for improvement and in identifying ongoing problems that your clients are facing.
A few simple statistics to examine include the quantity of requests received in a single week, the average time it takes to resolve a ticket, and the amount of time spent on various types of service requests. Real-time analysis of these data points will enable you to promptly identify and address any issues with your MSP help desk, such as instances in which engineers want additional training on a specific topic or in which tickets aren’t being prioritized appropriately.
Customer surveys are a very useful tool for project analysis. You can identify potential problems by asking customers to provide a rating once a ticket has been resolved, for example. Customer satisfaction surveys can provide deeper insights into areas that require improvement.
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Fine tune your SLAs
Whether you’re starting an MSP help desk business or adding a help desk to your already-existing MSP, you need to adjust your SLA (service level agreement) appropriately to reflect these services.
The scope of the services you can provide through your help desk (including what you don’t cover), the hours that you are available to provide support, the procedures for how clients can report issues, and how you categorize them should all be explicitly stated in your service level agreement (SLA). Expectations can be set for resolution times as well as for when requests are made outside of your help desk’s operating hours.
Specific and realistic SLAs should be set for these and other issues. Client responsibilities (such upgrading outdated hardware or adhering to security procedures) should also be covered by your SLA. Effective SLAs will also have clauses outlining how you can terminate your service agreement and safeguards against third-party responsibility.
No matter the exact nature of your billing model and client contracts, the SLA will provide the much-needed clarity on the kinds of MSP help desk services you offer, how you’ll deliver them, and when.
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