Outsourcing Technical Support Services: The trends & future

What is Technical Support? 

Technical support services refer to those entities provide to users of technology products or services. The technical support team is composed of individuals that are familiar with the ins and outs of a device. With this knowledge, they can troubleshoot most problems that a user experiences. Information on how to reach technical support is usually provided with the packaged materials included with a device. Technical support services may be provided over the phone, through email, or with a live-chat interface.

Generally, technical support provides help regarding specific problems with a product or service, rather than providing training, provision or customization of the product, or other support services.

This is 2020, and most people live, and breathe the Internet. It has empowered customers to perform a lot of tasks that previously took a lot of time to do, such as shopping, learning, banking, and more. The world has become a smaller place as the internet allows people all over the world to meet at a common place: online.

To keep up with the needs of the people, businesses have also migrated to this space. Naturally, businesses aim to provide the best products and solutions for clients globally.

Common technical support services

Businesses need technical support services for a variety of reasons, and the core focus of the support will depend on what their priorities are and the industry that they operate in. Here are some of the most commonly outsourced tech support functions and how they add value to a company:

Data security

Secure data servers are essential for the company as well as its customers. For one, business data may contain business plans, financial plans, and any or all tactics that companies use to grow. This is top secret information that should not fall into other people’s hands. On the other side, there’s sensitive information such as credit card details, residential address, etc. That customers entrust businesses with that should also be protected at all times.

Automation 

Processes run faster and more efficiently when things are automated, whether it’s payroll, marketing, or inventory management, analyzing and improving the processes that can cut down operation times is crucial.

Customer service 

In the age where the customer is king, it’s essential to add value to the customer experience wherever possible to stand out from the competition. Customer service and support play a huge role in defining the overall customer experience quality. And it directly affects business growth. It becomes a catalyst by fostering trust, loyalty, and advocacy.

Software Application Development & Maintenance 

 The digital age has brought about an increased number of software projects, which can be costly to develop in-house. Outsourcing app development and maintenance helps reduce overhead costs associated with software implementation and provides the necessary technical expertise to provide high service quality.

Cloud services 

The usage of cloud services has been commonly associated with Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) business. This involves applications that are hosted by the vendor and made available to customers through a network (the internet). This approach lets businesses create and implement applications without needing to invest in the underlying infrastructure, reducing costs, and increasing overall efficiency.

Trends that may impact your business

Numerous successful organizations have adeptly been embracing new technologies and trends. All these businesses, especially those which are in the outsourced technical support domain, should start monitoring the latest trends and start embracing the latest technologies to deliver top-tier solutions, under every circumstance. Various emerging trends would dominate the future of tech support outsourcing solutions. Let’s discuss some dominant trends.

Automation

The word ‘automation’ has revolutionized the business world as most of the strategies, policies, and initiatives of organizations worldwide are highly reliant on the ability of a company to automate every process. If you fail to induce automation in every business process and organizational strategy, then this inability can have a dreadful impact on multiple aspects of your business. That’s why experts want tech support solution providers to help businesses in this context. Once an outsourcing agency in the tech support domain has developed expertise into automation, it can easily surpass the ever-rising expectations of clients quite agilely.

Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

IBM reports that 85% of all customer interactions will be handled without human agents by 2020. Customer-centric business practices are here to stay, and chatbots help businesses achieve this. By always being there for the consumer, their questions are quickly addressed in a fast and timely manner.

This opens up new opportunities for the tech outsourcing scene by creating new roles and functions within the industry. IT experts will now have to work with the latest technology like AR, VR, IoT, and the like.

Cloud-based services 

As the cloud and big data have started creating excitement in the business fraternity, the demands of cloud-based call center outsourcing services have experienced a sudden rise. Nowadays, every business firm aspires to make the most of the opportunities ensured by a cloud-based infrastructure, and therefore, they have started storing their crucial data on cloud. More importantly, as cloud-based strategies ensure round-the-clock availability and are quite flexible, it is so obvious that more businesses would start expecting their call center partners to offer cloud-based solutions. Therefore, corporate call centers and tech support solution providers should ideally pay attention to this pivotal factor.

Remote access

Technical support services providers have found it challenging to provide top-tier solutions due to high operational expenditures. They have always claimed that without the availability of physical devices and gadgets, it would always be a pain point for them to analyze core issues and eliminate the same adroitly. Herein, remote access technology has certainly emerged as a promising solution that can ideally help tech support teams cure every technical irregularity in an adroit and hassle-free manner. Therefore, tech support companies should use the latest remote access technologies to stay competitive in the field.

Augmented Reality

The adoption of AR can change the tech support industry as a whole by allowing remote teams to help each other more effectively. It allows tech experts to help on-site mechanics solve issues in various dealerships. It cut down service time by almost half and communicate with other team members more seamlessly while in different locations.

Network Security

Networking security is the number one priority of digital businesses. Almost half (47%) of the enterprises surveyed mentioned they outsource data security more often than any other IT service.

With the recent data breaches from major digital companies (i.e., Facebook and Google) enterprises are now compelled to focus on corporate and customer data. IT outsourcing contracts will include specific clauses to prevent data breaches and manipulation.

Reputation management

This is yet another forward-looking initiative that ambitious outsourced technical support companies have undertaken intending to surprise their clients with one-stop customer relationship management solutions. It is quite an agreeable fact that nowadays customers have resorted to using social media platforms to express their happiness as well as disappointments, and businesses need to have quite an impeccable monitoring framework to keep a close eye on whatsoever their customers have to speak about. If tech support call centers can herein ensure efficient reputation management solutions, then it can be yet another factor to count on!

Predictive Analytics

Data has gotten smarter with predictive analytics. Benchmarking and calculating performance improvements will become more manageable as new tech can now analyze past metrics, customer behavior, and service outcomes. This will allow businesses to focus on their ops and keep all teams aligned with their goals.

Complete Integration from Managed Service Providers (MSP)

Businesses prefer to have one MSP providing all their outsourced IT functions. In line with making MSPs business partners, this will allow for seamless integration, so that all business functions can work together in sync.

Proactive support

Although this aspect has already gained massive popularity in the customer service domain, nonetheless it deserves special mention because its popularity is bound to increase- that too manifold with time. You need to learn the art of showing or expressing your willingness to assist customers, and if you can convey this message proactively, then you are unquestionably reinforcing your bonds with customers. That’s why businesses ask their customer support partners to ensure proactive call center outsourcing services. This attribute of a tech support company can make it more competitive.

Why is outsourcing the only way to keep up?

These are the latest trends that all the forward-looking outsourced Technical support services companies need to be quite watchful about. Once you have embraced these changes, you are well-prepared to unravel the ocean of opportunities that technological advancements bequeath.

With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and machine learning, among others, tech systems face a lot of progress and updates at a much faster pace. Outsourced tech support agents are usually the best people companies can approach, as they are always updated with the latest tech buzz and innovative software.

Thanks to our increasingly tech-filled world, IT services aren’t going out of style anytime soon. Effectively managed tech support and services can pose a lot of benefits for your business, from increased manpower and lowered costs to higher customer satisfaction and retention rates. With the rising demand and advancing technology, the tech support sector is poised to continue growing rapidly over the next few years. It’ll be interesting to see what other developments come next!

In an ideal world, business operations go smoothly and customers never have any problems or issues at all. Sadly, we’re not living in a utopia. If your website, e-commerce store, customer support system, or any other online channels break down, various aspects of your business could be compromised. It could even create a negative impression with your customers or hurt your sales.

So, in a world connected by the internet, social media, and smart devices, it’s in almost every business’s best interest to invest in technical support services outsourcing. It’s more than just the digital version of calling a plumber to fix your leaking pipes.