IT Support Desk Red Flags & Warning Signs

One of the most important measures of a managed IT service provider is the effectiveness of their support desk or help desk. This level of day-to-day technical support is considered a strong indicator of the overall MSP’s effectiveness and is therefore instrumental to customer satisfaction.

But not all IT help desks are created equal. And for businesses contending with fiercer competition, unstable economies and stricter regulatory pressure, it’s imperative to ensure your MSP’s support desk is meeting (or better yet, exceeding) expectations and delivering the level of service required to sustain your daily operations.

Consider how your current support desk stacks up when it comes to these critical factors.

24×7 Availability & Internal Staffing

Round-the-clock IT support delivers significant value to businesses in just about every industry you can think of. Technology is far from infallible, and oftentimes it seems it acts up on us when we need it the most. That’s why access to true 24x7x365 support is critical.

Red Flags:

• Your MSP mostly staffs 8am-5pm with minimal after-hours availability and much slower response times.
• Their after-hours support is further outsourced to a third party that doesn’t understand your business, the products/services you use and your unique technical needs. This often leads to issues with communication and contributes to ineffective knowledge transfer.

What to Look For:

• A fully staffed service desk, including dedicated tier 1 and escalation engineers who can access critical knowledge about your business and troubleshoot issues quickly to further minimize disruption.

Responsiveness & Effectiveness

Of course, even if your MSP’s support function works 24×7, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can get them on the phone at any hour of the day. One of the most necessary features of a help desk is its ability to act swiftly – both in answering the call and resolving the issue.

Red Flags:

• It takes minutes or sometimes hours to get someone from your IT help desk on the phone.
• Your first point of contact is with a bot (not a person) who can only gather basic information and offer cookie-cutter solutions to cookie-cutter problems.

What to Look For:

• Even the smallest technology problems can disrupt your productivity (and even cost your business real dollars) – look to work with a managed service provider that can demonstrate swift action in responding to customer issues.
• Be sure to ask your MSP about key performance indicators including call answer rate (CAR), average speed of answer and wait time, and ticket backlog.

Quality Metrics & Customer Satisfaction

In addition to response metrics, there are critical quality metrics that can help you identify and evaluate IT service desks to determine if they meet your specific support needs. Benchmarks like customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) and net promoter scores (NPS) measure IT support performance and shed light on how much an MSP’s existing customer base values their service.

Red Flags:

• MSPs with low or inconsistent CSAT and NPS scores could be hiding some major difficulties (inability to meet demand, poorly trained staff, poor leadership, etc.).
• It’s also a red flag if your MSP doesn’t track these scores or is unwilling to share them!

What to Look for:

• Specific CSAT benchmarks vary widely by industry, however scores above 30 are generally considered to be good, while scores upwards of 70 are highly exceptional.

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