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What is Help Desk?

A help desk is an information and assistance resource that troubleshoots problems with computers or similar products. Corporations often provide help desk support to their customers via a toll-free number, website and/or e-mail. There are also in-house help desks geared toward providing the same kind of help for employees only. Some schools offer classes in which they perform similar tasks as a help desk. In the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, within companies adhering to ISO/IEC 20000 or seeking to implement IT Service Management best practice, a help desk may offer a wider range of user centric services and be part of a larger Service Desk.

Functions

A typical help desk has several functions. It provides the users a single point of contact, to receive help on various computer issues. The help desk typically manages its requests via help desk software, such as an incident tracking system, that allows them to track user requests with a unique ticket number. This can also be called a "Local Bug Tracker" or LBT. The help desk software can often be an extremely beneficial tool when used to find, analyze, and eliminate common problems in an organization's computing environment. There are many software applications available to support the help desk function. Some are targeting enterprise level help desk (rather large) and some are targeting departmental needs. See Comparison of issue tracking systems.

In the mid 1990s, Middleton ^[1] at Robert Gordon University found through his research that many organizations had begun to recognize that the real value of their help desk(s) derives not solely from their reactive response to users' issues but from the help desk's unique position where it communicates daily with numerous customers or employees. This gives the help desk the ability to monitor the user environment for issues from technical problems to user preferences and satisfaction. Such information gathered at the help desk can be valuable for use in planning and preparation for other units in IT.

Call centre

A call centre or call center^[1] is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests bytelephone. A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, product services, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.

A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers andLANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).

Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue retailers, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks, retail financial support, and sales support.

A contact centre, also known as customer interaction center is a central point of any organization from which all customer contacts are managed. Through contact centers, valuable information about company are routed to appropriate people, contacts to be tracked and data to be gathered. It is generally a part of company’s customer relationship management (CRM). Today, customers contact companies by calling, emailing, chatting online, visiting websites, faxing, and even instant messaging.

Computer telephony integration

Computer telephony integration, also called computer–telephone integration or CTI, is technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be integrated or co-ordinated. As contact channels have expanded from voice to include email, web, and fax, the definition of CTI has expanded to include the integration of all customer contact channels (voice, email, web, fax, etc.) with computer systems.

Interactive voice response

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a technology that allows a computer to detect voice and dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) keypad inputs. IVR technology is used extensively in telecommunication, but is also being introduced into automobile systems for hands-free operation. Current deployment in automobiles revolves around satellite navigation, audio and mobile phone systems. In telecommunications, IVR allows customers to access a company’s database via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which they can service their own inquiries by following the instructions. IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed. IVR systems can be used to control almost any function where the interface can be broken down into a series of simple menu choices. In telecommunications applications, such as customer support lines, IVR systems generally scale well to handle large call volumes.

It has become common in industries that have recently entered the telecommunications industry to refer to an Automated Attendant as an IVR. The terms Automated Attendantand IVR are distinct and mean different things to traditional telecommunications professionals, whereas emerging telephony and VoIP professionals often use the term IVR as a catch-all to signify any kind of telephony menu, even a basic automated attendant. The term VRU, for Voice Response Unit, is sometimes used as well.^[1]

Outsourcing

Outsourcing often refers to the process of subcontracting to a third-party.^[1] While outsourcing may be viewed as a component to the growing division of laborencompassing all societies, the term did not enter the English-speaking lexicon until the 1980s. Since the 1980s, transnational corporations have increased subcontracting across national boundaries. In the United States, outsourcing is a popular political issue, especially during election years.

Reasons

Organizations that outsource are seeking to realize benefits or address the following issues:^{[11][12][13][14]}

• Cost savings. The lowering of the overall cost of the service to the business. This will involve reducing the scope, defining quality levels, re-pricing, re-negotiation, cost re-structuring. Access to lower cost economies through offshoring called "labor arbitrage" generated by the wage gap between industrialized and developing nations.^[15]
• Focus on Core Business. Resources (for example investment, people, infrastructure) are focused on developing the core business. For example often organizations outsource their IT support to specialised IT services companies.
• Cost restructuring. Operating leverage is a measure that compares fixed costs to variable costs. Outsourcing changes the balance of this ratio by offering a move from fixed to variable cost and also by making variable costs more predictable.
• Improve quality. Achieve a step change in quality through contracting out the service with a new service level agreement.
• Knowledge. Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge.^[16]
• Contract. Services will be provided to a legally binding contract with financial penalties and legal redress. This is not the case with internal services.^[17]
• Operational expertise. Access to operational best practice that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house.
• Access to talent. Access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills, in particular in science and engineering.^[3][18]
• Capacity management. An improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier.
• Catalyst for change. An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that can not be achieved alone. The outsourcer becomes aChange agent in the process.
• Enhance capacity for innovation. Companies increasingly use external knowledge service providers to supplement limited in-house capacity for product innovation.^[19][20]
• Reduce time to market. The acceleration of the development or production of a product through the additional capability brought by the supplier.
• Commodification. The trend of standardizing business processes, IT Services, and application services which enable to buy at the right price, allows businesses access to services which were only available to large corporations.
• Risk management. An approach to risk management for some types of risks is to partner with an outsourcer who is better able to provide the mitigation.^[21]
• Venture Capital. Some countries match government funds venture capital with private venture capital for startups that start businesses in their country.^[22]
• Tax Benefit. Countries offer tax incentives to move manufacturing operations to counter high corporate taxes within another country.
• Scalability. The outsourced company will usually be prepared to manage a temporary or permanent increase or decrease in production.
• Creating leisure time. Individuals may wish to outsource their work in order to optimise their work-leisure balance.