Outsourcing Technical Support Call Centers: A Strategy for Growing Businesses

As companies grow, dealing with that growth can be quite an ordeal to manage. An increasing volume of orders can be a strain on staff. For technology companies, this problem is twofold: not only do they need more staff time to continue to enhance their products, but they also need more staff to provide technical support to customers. The challenge of providing tech support is the greater of these two tasks - lengthy calls requiring highly experienced technical staff can consume a larger and larger part of their valuable time. Fortunately, outsourcing technical support to a trusted partner can alleviate this problem. With the right outsourcing, companies can free up their resources and meet the challenge of growth head-on.

Companies often become concerned as they face the reality that increased sales volume means
bringing on board increased resources. There is a quite legitimate apprehension that bringing
on new full-time staff could prove a dangerous move if sales volumes recede. For technology
companies, especially in software development, growing sales equal growing demands on
tech support, placing the greatest immediate pressure for expansion on tech support centers.
Outsourcing offers a way to deal with an increased volume of tech support without taking on
new staff. The savings can be considerable, and the risk is lowered--companies can handle an
increase in volume without taking on the risk of overextending themselves.

Technical Support Outsourcing Enables Companies to Maximize Resources

In addition to reducing risk, outsourcing technical support frees up other internal resources
needed for growth. In a small company, the same employees who provide tech support are
also often the ones doing research and development. Freeing them from tech support calls
means more time to develop products. Providing the challenge of R&D work can also aid in
employee retention. Thus, a successful technical support-outsourcing program can maximize
the effectiveness of existing technical staff. Outsourcing tech support is especially useful in
today’s economy when the focus is on cost avoidance. Building out a technical support call
center requires space, equipment (such as redundant VoIP telephone systems, automatic call
distribution systems, software packages that include skills based routing, etc.), and a failover
plan and of course staff. In these unstable economic times, companies must find a way to
provide the quality support that is critical to product sales while also practicing capital
conservation.

One of the greatest benefits of outsourcing is the opportunity to provide a higher level of
service, in the form of longer hours of tech support, thus creating a more solid, professional
image for a company. Customers increasingly expect near 24-hour technical support; they
have come to view extended hours of support as the norm.

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