The Most Critical Managed Service: Help Desk Services?
Managed services providers (MSPs) spend considerable time focused on next-generation opportunities like cloud computing and mobile device management (MDM). But for some MSPs, I suspect it’s time to get back to basics. Among my recommendations: Take a close look at your help desk services. Here’s why.
I concede: MSPmentor didn’t spend much time covering help desk services during this site’s early years. But gradually, I began to drink the help desk Kool Aid. Your help desk is a managed service since it generates monthly recurring revenues (MRR). And your help desk manages some of your most critical customer interactions.
Think of it this way: Apple Stores are filled with innovative, shiny new technologies. But ultimately, it’s the Apple help desk — the Apple Genius Bar — that drives the customer experience, and keeps millions of customers loyal to Apple.
In House or Outsource?
Should you outsource your help desk and NOC (network operations center) services, freeing your staff up to focus on higher-margin services? Or should you keep such services under your roof, staffed by full-time employees who understand your corporate culture, customer platforms, and service delivery model? The answer to that question is a bit like the on-premise vs. cloud computing debate — one size does not fit all.
A growing number of companies are offering outsourced NOC and help-desk services. There are the established names like Cloud Services Depot, NetEnrich and Zenith Infotech. And there are emerging players like Bobcares, Global Mentoring Solutions (producer of GMS Live Expert), Live Virtual Help Desk and Zendesk. There’s even an emerging organization, called NetworkedHelpDesk.org, which strives to promote superior customer service. And ConnectWise recently introduced a help desk kit to help its MSP partners master customer service.
Regardless of your help desk choices, it’s time for MSPs to get back to basics. Cloud is sexy. Mobility is cool. But an effective help desk — backed by carefully tracked performance metrics — can turn your customers into raving fans. And weak help desks can send your customers running for the exits.
Which would you prefer?
Cloud Services depot id only Help desk mentioned that offers VARs a choice of traditional unlimited calls per user or a per minute plan VARs can use to provide help to Tamp;M clients for fee AND convert them to monthly service. Some VARs I have talked to use this private label minutes service when traveling or on vacation. Interesting option.
Excellent article Joe!
Having run several successful companies, I try to develop a corporate culture around one very simple concept: Happy Customers = More Customers.
This basic equation just means that if you keep your current customers happy with your product and service, your business will grow based on referrals and good word of mouth (no, you can’t get rid of the sales department!).
As many companies have found, the corollary is also true: You will lose current and prospective customers if you are not able to keep satisfaction levels up.
We founded TeamSupport.com to provide a powerful yet easy to use tool for technology companies to make happy customers, and we – and our customers – have been very successful! I encourage your readers to check us out – We’d love to help them make Happy Customers!
Robert Johnson
CEO
TeamSupport.com
Earle@1: Thanks for reading and for the background on Cloud Services Depot. Can you disclose if you’re affiliated with the company, so that readers have a bit more background?
Robert@2: Thanks for the link; I’ll check it out.
-jp
Yes Joe — I do work on a consulting basis with CSD. But reason for comment– I am unaware of other established Help Desk vendors
providing this option which many VARs need for a variety of reasons. I hope all vendorsoffer this since it will help the community.
Joe P. wrote, “A growing number of companies are offering outsourced NOC and help-desk services.” Absolutely, or MSPs can spin up their own service desk offering powered by Nimsoft’s Service Desk software: http://www.nimsoft.com/solutions/nimsoft-service-desk
Ken Vanderweel
Marketing Director – Service Providers
Nimsoft
The Utility Company also offers per minute pricing for their help desk services. And no I am not affiliated with them..:)
Ken: Thanks for the update on Nimsoft; I have to start compiling a list of the help desk and service desk offerings out there for MSPs.
Lane: Anytime I start listing companies I’m bound to overlook a few of the well-known brands. Thanks for the Utility Company reminder.
Readers: If you have additional guidance on potential partners and platforms, I’m all ears.
-jp
Live Virtual Help Desk is now offering per incident support as well as per seat (device or user, depending upon circumstance). We do find that most MSP/VAR partners still prefer the fixed cost model. We prefer it as well, rather than discussing how many minutes a technician spent with an end user, we would prefer to focus on the customer service and remediation aspect of support delivery. We must all accept added overhead and reduced actual focus on the end user when we add per incident or per minute to the mix.
Having said that, I believe there are many capable companies providing support services with a plethora of billing options to suit your requirements. Choose a good one and you will enjoy instant scalability and most likely increase your overall support hours and experience whilst adding more $ to your bank account.
I would love to hear some feedback on how some of these guys are choosing their help desk platform. How did you evaluate Outsourced companies and if you chose in house, why?
At ALCALA, we run our service desk in house. We have complete control over the quality of service, response time is faster, our techs sing the same song, and we get more client referrals this way. We tried outsourcing the help desk in 2007, but our clients complained on a daily basis about a variety of things including but not limited to long hold times, transfers to voice mail, having to repeat case information to different techs, techs blurting out that they did not support a certain technology, etc.
Marco Alcala
http://www.alcalaconsulting.com
I have a number of partners who outsource their level 1 help desk, this allows the MSP to employe higher level technical talent to better service their clients.
While I try to stay vendor neutral, the partners that I work with who have been outsourcing their help desk have been working with the team at Live Virtual Help Desk. The feed back on the quality of the calls and technical expertise is nothing less than stellar.
I hope that this feed back can help any MSP/VAR who is thinking about bringing on a outsource partner.
Regards,
Stu
Stuart Selbst Consulting
http://www.mspcoaching.com
It sounded interesting, and then I read this line: “But ultimately, it’s the Apple help desk — the Apple Genius Bar — that drives the customer experience, and keeps millions of customers loyal to Apple.”
Sorry, but this is simply not true. I’ve been a Mac user myself for 20 years, and in all that time, I’ve called Support at most 5 times. They’re good, but not that good. What drives Apple loyalty is quality of design and the experience of using the product, not the Genius Bar. Apple has a very crisp strategy as regards Support: the best support call of all is the one that was never made because the product didn’t generate the need for it in the first place. Do they always succeed? Of course not — but they do better than anything else I’ve tried, and when you do have to call for help, it’s there.
The key to customer retention in the SaaS/Cloud sector is having somebody authentically accountable and responsible for it. That’s not Customer Support, that’s **Customer Success.**
The Cloud Channel Summit will take place in Mountain View, CA on Mov 7th, and support/success is one of the topics to be discussed there. I’m helping Jeff Kaplan, the conference organizer, to design the program and to recruit sponsors and speakers. Here’s a link to an article about the event:
Partnership in the Cloud: The Redefinition of The Channel
http://mblaisdell.com/?p=2629
More information about Support in the SaaS/Cloud era may be found here:
http://www.thehotlinemagazine.com
–mikael
TheHotLineMagazine.com
The SaaS Support Project / Forum
JP…one of the hot topics at every MSP Univerity boot camp and I am sure it will one this week in SFO as well. Dove Help Desk is always here talking to MSPs about the value of outsourcing help desk services. I also have clients on Live VHD and GMS. They all rave about the services. The trust is this…MSPs must do this now, forget about the fears of culture, consistency, or them stealing clients. With proper onboarding this is usually not a problem.
Do you your homework and choose the right MSP Help Desk
Cheers
Stuart Crawford
Ulistic
416.827.5339
JP – great post. We think our partners should be very focused on their help desk initiatives…the magic in help desk definitely comes from best practice in your PSA and combining that functionality with your RMM. Help desk means fixing as much as you can remotely and creating an option play for how you utilize resources while driving the tightest SLA possible. And of course profitability 🙂 Great news for ConnectWise partners – you now have access to a help desk kit. Check it out in our University. Hope all is well JP!
j. 🙂
Excellent topic Joe, help desk support is one of the most critical alliances an MSP will forge. With that in mind, you must evaluate the level of prospective partners’ competencies in the areas you need them. In the same way you scrutinize a new employee’s certifications, make sure your help desk has the expert support staff to properly support your clients (and maintain your quality reputation). For example, one of my clients’ (GMS) employs help desk experts average 20 certifications each, with as many as 65, including Microsoft Certified Professional Engineers, Microsoft Certified Database Administrators, Microsoft Office Master, Cisco CCDP, CompTIA i-Net+, and CompTIA Network +.
Hi Folks,
Just a quick note to let you know I’ve been reading all the comments and digesting the info for possible future coverage angles. Thanks for the feedback and insights.
-jp
Excellent to see so much discussion around help desk services, especially the benefits relating to outsourcing that key aspect of your business! As the CEO of GMS LiveExpert, I’ve seen firsthand how MSPs can quickly and effectively grow their business (and revenue) with the right help desk partner. It’s critical for service providers to carefully research their options, including pricing models (ours is based on utilization as opposed to per minute or per seat offerings) that allow them to get the most cost-effective and quality service mix. That lets each MSP address their specific service gaps and attain economies of scale.
To echo the comment of Dan S of Live VHD. There is no shortage of offerings out there – all with excellent benefits. Our respective goals are to find partners that fit with our offerings to ensure we all enjoy a successful and lasting collaboration. That’s how an effective help desk relationship becomes a win for all involved, including the end users.
First, full disclosure – we work closely with Dan and the guys at Live Virtual HelpDesk and provide an on-ramp for VirtualAdministrator.com partners to gain access to their services.
I know how you like to have people say who they are associated with, Joe, so I figured I’d lead with that.
Here’s what we’ve found with our own local MSP (VirtualAdministrator.com teaches some of what it learns and tries with a local DC area MSP) — it’s all about setting proper expectations. When we make it clear to our customers that the Helpdesk is an adjunct to our core services (i.e. their local engineer), they are much happier with the results. We tell them that using an outsourced group allows for 24×7 access and quicker response during the day when our local staff is slammed. When presented that way it looks like we’re going the extra mile rather than abdicating – presentation is really the key.
I’d be interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on how they present services – specifically those running MSPs, not those running outsourced service desks (sorry guys!).
We keep our HD in house, and it will stay that way. The help desk is our front line. It’s who the client interacts with the vast majoritiy of the time. It’s who builds the relationship, reinforces the message, and looks for opportunity with the client. A help desk that can do the job is just entry to the game. A help desk that furthers your brand and opens the door to be that strategic parnter is priceless. If we do a poor job with help desk clients are unlikely to embrace our advice on long term initiatives. I need to own that part of the client relationship.
Last call: I’ll be moving this blog entry off of our featured post area soon. But the comments area remains open… forever. Thanks everyone.
-jp
Interesting article Joe.
I’m not aware of any outsourced Helpdesk providers for MSP’s here in the UK, yet it’s something many of my smaller MSP clients would like to investigate. Larger MSP’s also have interest in supplementing their own in-house Helpdesk with 24×7 coverage, but would prefer to outsource this function rather than build themselves.
In my experience, UK MSP’s are reluctant to outsource such an important client-facing aspect of their business to US-based companies too.
Potentially a gap in the British MSP market for a UK based provider of such services?
Richard @ 21 – Our support is global. I am sure this would be the same for others here as well. We are most happy to add UK based business.
At Novo Solutions we work with clients who keep their IT in house as well as managed service providers. One thing we see is that a lot of policy is dependent an a single person or department. This works both ways: we get calls from new staff that wants a new solution and choose us, and at times we lose a client because a new manager comes in and wants to use what he/she used somewhere else.
Cloud solutions do allow customers to move in and out of solutions with more ease, so we offer our software as both in-house licensed an hosted. For more information on the Novo Help Desk Software or a free trial contact us.
Hi Folks — An open memo to Help Desk Software Vendors and Outsourced NOC/Help Desk Providers…
We’d welcome the opportunity to learn more about your business. I am not guaranteeing editorial coverage but I am inviting you to tell us about your business, your history, your go-to-market strategy, your work with MSPs, VARs and cloud services providers.
Feel free to send press releases and inquiries to:
Joe Panettieri, joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com
Nicholas Mukhar, nicholas [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com
We are the lead bloggers on MSPmentor. Thank you.
-jp
I would be interested to know if there have been any studies in regards to profitability of outsourced vs in house helpdesk?
B.T.,
I haven’t seen those data points. But I believe if one approach had a huge profit/margin benefit over another approach, then we’d hear about it loud and clear in the market. Those that keep helpdesk inhouse talk about remaining super-close to the customer. Those that outsource helpdesk talk about focusing on more strategic opportunities. I apologize for generalizing.
-jp
I’ve cost compared and outsourcing the desk was more expensive that keeping it in house. I suppose one could outsource to India and perhaps save a bit of money. I can’t imagine outsourcing our relationship w/ customers, after all, that is where the rubber meets the road, daily. Same math holds for outsourcing NOC services unfortunately.
Outsourcing your complete helpdesk may not be a good option for everyone. However, a lean-mean and efficient MSP must outsource some of the most routin tasks like patch management, backup monitoring, AV – anti spam monitoring etc. May be even alert management or performance monitoring.
At ITimpulse we are trying to do the same for MSPs, helping them run IT operations without the noise.Our services are designed have no or minimum interaction with the customer.
http://www.itimpulse.in .