List of Technical Support Outsourcing Firms - Important Questions to Ask Before Building Your List.

Technical Support Outsourcing: Questions to Ask Yourself & Potential Providers

Outsourcing Technical Support is beneficial to many organizations if done correctly with a good understanding of the who's, what's, and why's. What are the reasons for outsourcing and which outsourced provider is the right service partner for your business? There are many questions you need to ask yourself and potential outsource technical support providers.

Questions to ask yourself about your business

Is price more important than service?

• If this is the case then much of the rest of this paper is not particularly relevant to you. Over time and with more experience, you may still be able to leverage the guidance provided should your priorities change.

Does your business depend on monthly or annual renewals?

• Organizations that depend on recurring business know that delivering flawless technical support to their clients when the client has a problem and is most frustrated is critical to client retention. With the commoditization of products and services and the Internet's leveling of the playing field, the quality of technical support has become the "key" differentiator.

What is your core business?

• Some firms say that they NEVER outsource. They only think this is true. Almost all firms outsource electricity, phone, coffee, cleaning services to name a few and are happy to do so. Delivering flawless technical support takes many skills, resources and most importantly processes and experience that are not generally core to non-support businesses. What is it that your business does best? Many firms have great technologists that create products or services and talented sales and marketing teams to get the products in the hands of customers. In most firms, remaining focused on product development, marketing and sales as their core competencies is the best use of limited resources. For some firms, outsourcing all marketing and sales makes sense too!

Who does technical support in your company? Why?

• Most firms start out delivering technical support during their business hours utilizing their best, brightest and most likely the most expensive resources — connected to pagers — and on a catch as catch can basis. Expanding beyond business hours is a necessary next step for any successful business. Many start out rotating pagers or cell phones to their day staff to gain coverage. This works for a while. Soon, it begins to have negative impact on morale. Then, most importantly, This system negatively impacts the ability for your "best and brightest" to deliver features and functionality and then ultimately to remain competitive and grow the business. Firms may try to grow a small staff of lower skilled resources to deliver support with little or no management, structure or previous experience. Even with experience, creating a highly effect support organization is TOUGH!

How do you control costs and scale your support as your business grows?

• Technical support is both a labor and capital intensive service with unpredictable levels of demand. Delivering tech support incurs costs even when no technical support calls come in from your clients. Only the most sophisticated, mature clients will have metrics that allow accurate forecasting of support demand. With most clients and nearly all low-volume or first-time tech support clients, demand forecasting is achievable only at the broad brush level. Staffing for acceptable call wait times at low volumes is expensive. Average handle time is also a critical cost driver when delivering a quality experience to clients. Technical support has to always be there, this means that phone systems, phone lines, internet connections, knowledge bases, work flow engines and a myriad of other technologies and people need to be redundant and seamlessly available. Providers of quality support services have to be willing and able to staff up or down quickly to control costs and meet SLAs when call volumes spike. Outsourcing to a firm that specializes in delivering technical support wins you economies and quality if you pick the right firm.

Does your support demand vary with time of day, week, month, and year or with the release cycles of your product or on demand service?

• If this is the case, scaling the resources you have available appropriately will be a significant end-user experience challenge. Having the ability to deliver an acceptable average speed of answer (ASA) means having a sufficient number of support personnel available to answer phones when they ring — but not TOO many. Good volume forecasting and average handle time play crucial roles in determining the right number of agents needed — in any given hour on any given shift - to deliver the ASA with any degree of confidence.

Are your clients global and/or do they demand support 24 x 7?

• Providing 24 x 7 support is even more challenging given the management, recruiting costs associated with doing so. The most basic 24 x 7 support requires on the order of nine people and even with that, there will be many challenges as you deal with holidays, vacations, sick time, unexcused absences, and attrition. Language support may come into play depending on your client base. Outsourcing to a firm that specializes in delivering 24 x 7 technical support is an economical solution.

Is your product complicated or simple?

• Despite what you might believe, it doesn't really matter. The right outsourced technical support provider will have the right resources to handle the job and will be able to extend their core knowledge to your product(s).

What level of support do you want to outsource?

• Businesses have to look at this question carefully. Broadly defined, support can be broken in to four categories.
   
  

  • Tier 0 or Customer Service — scripted, non-technical question & answers, short duration client interactions.

  
  

  • Tier 1 — Scripted responses to a known set of issues/questions. Generally well defined client interaction durations and clear escalation points to Tier 2.

  
  

  • Tier 2 — Unscripted, free form problem analysis, reproduction and resolution or escalation to Tier 3. Duration is generally driven by the caller and the problem and difficult to control or predict except by policy definition.

  
  

  • Tier 3 — Engineering, code fix, bug fix, features/enhancements, major releases.

  
  

What is your committed service level to your clients?

• Many firms fail to plan, or fail to plan carefully when defining and agreeing to service levels to their clients. Setting extremely stringent, but achievable, SLAs with initial clients that will become cost prohibitive at higher volumes will create account management nightmares when these costs force the lowering of SLAs across your entire installed client base. It is important to work out realistic SLAs that are supportable in the long term from the beginning.

What are the key performance indicators (KPI) that tell you that you and your technical support organization are doing a great job?

• Very few firms think about KPIs when it comes to support. Most expect that the service providers will tell them which ones to use. Ultimately this responsibility lies with you and your business. Outsourcers can provide KPIs that are meaningful to their business and may be broadly meaningful to yours but are not likely to be KEY. For instance, if you track and achieve excellent average handle time metrics, but your first call resolution or resolution at tier 1 numbers are ignored, your perception of value will be skewed. So your Tier 1 AHT is under 5 minutes. If all Tier 1 does with those 5 minutes is put a pretty wrapping on a trouble call and escalate it to your (already over-worked) Tier 2 team, what do they really contribute to your customer experience and bottom line? If you want them to tell you what your KPIs should be, you should engage them as consultants to do so.

What types of support will you provide to your clients: Email, Phone, Web Portal, Chat?

• The answer to this question is "it depends". It depends on many factors and considerations. Did you know that your best phone agents are not automatically going to be your best chat agents? They may not even be decent chat agents. And vice versa. By working with the right outsourced technical support provider you can craft the best solution for your business and ultimately for your clients.

About Potential Outsourcing Providers

What should you look for in an outsourced technical support provider?

• According to the Black Book of Outsourcing "Customization, Cultural Fit, Reliability and Customer Relationships are the most important attributes influencing ITO Technology Support Services clients' satisfaction of their respective and collective outsourcing providers.
  Strong dissatisfaction is uncommon in this niche ITO service segment, where the vendor offers extensive services for Hardware and Devices, Applications and Tools and Services, occurring in only 7.9% of clients globally. Vendors focused on small niches of tech support attribute higher dissatisfaction rates, particularly from offshore locations.
  Comprehensive Services Vendor Arrangements from a Comprehensive end-to-end Tech Support Vendor produces the Highest Satisfaction Rates."

Diving a little deeper into specific questions to ask or things to look for in an Outsource Technical support provider, prospective outsourcers should look for the following:

• Experience: Have they done this before for similar products or services and for how long? Will they help you make your business/product/service better by being a Trusted Advisor?


• Flexibility: Can and will they adapt to how your business works? Can they integrate into your workflow (use your CRM or provide you with one to use)?


• Security: Are they PCI Compliant? Are they SAS070 Type II certified?


• Scalability: Do they have the capability to grow with you and to handle the "bursts" of support issues that may be out of the ordinary?


• Process Maturity: Are they making it up as they go or do they work from standard operating procedures and guidelines?


• Training: How will they initially train their staff in your product, service or technologies? How will they stay current?


• Infrastructure/Redundancy: Have they made the right investments to allow for continuous service availability?


• Billing Models: Do they bill for just the service provided or do they charge for standby time as well? Do they offer a "per incident" model? Do they charge by unit of time? Do they only offer full time heads?


• Termination: How have they performed in the past once a customer has notified them that they wish to terminate the contract? What are they obligated to give back to you?


• Other: What is unique about your company and the support you need/want to provide? Make sure you identify issues that are specific to your requirements and discuss them with your very short list of potential partners.

At this point you have asked the hard questions — have received answers that you are comfortable with - and are in a position to select your future partner. They have had an opportunity to understand your requirements and expectations and have given you contracts.

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One final reflection on the process may help you make your selection
if it is not already obvious.