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Help
Desk Outsourcing
Call Center Based Help Desk Serving
Nationwide Service
Call Center or Help Desk?
The line is blurring between the Help Desk
and the Call Center. Which came first? Both, the Help Desk and the Call
Center, are fairly recent phenomena, but broadly speaking the Help Desk
as we know it today started to take on that form in the mid-1990's. PC's
have evolved as relatively user friendly, and corporations started to use
them instead of mainframe-attached CRT's. This led to an explosion in
desktop computing, with inexperienced users needing assistance with
complex software, new printers, routers and a wide spectrum of other
technologies.
The Call Center, using advanced computer
and telecommunications technologies, is by comparison to Help Desk
centers, have been around for many years. It is the Call Center Market
that has fostered the new technologies of Interactive Voice Response and
Computer Telephone Integration.
Now we have Help Desks adopting
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and other essentially Call Center
practices. Why are so many companies combining their Help Desks into
their call Centers rather than offering the existing IT Help Desk
manager the opportunity to start the new Call Center? The answer is a
simple one - money. The Call Center was born as a sales aid, so it was
a profit Center from the beginning. It had different management and a
different mission. But it had something else that most Help Desks still
lack - a cost-benefit justification.
It is not that the Help Desk does not
have a financial justification, it is just that many companies have
not found it yet. The Help Desk has become a cost burden to keep
sophisticated systems running. Therefore, the Help Desk has become a
logical candidate for business to outsource.
Apart from history, mission and
financing, the two other main differences between the Help Desk and
the Call Center are the use of knowledge and telephone method.
Knowledge management is a
particularly important distinction, for it partly dictates how
the two functions deploy that most essential of service
resources, namely people. Both functions use knowledge to impart
information to callers. However, the Call Center's knowledge is
usually extracted from a finite, known pool of knowledge.
Typically, this will be a catalog of products and services, their
features, pricing and availability. Occasionally, Call Center
operatives may have to glean that information from a variety of
sources, in the way the old Information Centers of the eighties
DP departments used to do, but essentially the knowledge is still
already in existence somewhere.
The Help Desk is different.
True, they will also impart pre-manufactured knowledge, but
they also have another way of producing knowledge, namely
diagnosis. Unlike the typical Call Center, the Help Desk is a
problem-solving resource. This simple fact separates the two
departments most starkly, in that they must use different staff
with different skills. One does not usually need a
manufacturer's certificate or profound technical knowledge to
work in a Call Center - use of a knowledge base or recitation
of a set of pre-scripted questions is a competence that can be
gained relatively quickly. The Typical Help Desk operation of
defining a technical problem, while comforting a distraught
computer user, requires a peculiar mix of skills which are
quintessentially mission critical for Help Desk, and not
usually associated with the Call Center.
This diverts us into the realm
of crossover Help Desk / Call Center services, where the
terminology starts to blur. The importance of knowledge, and
its skilful deployment is paramount in all service Center
definitions. The value of diagnostic ability coupled with a
customer service ethic is pushing up salary levels in Help
Desks. Yet although the call Center is a profit engine,
salaries there are notoriously low.
Probably the biggest
difference between the Help Desk and the Call Center, the
Help Desk gets a call requiring diagnosis outside the
script, which requires specialized software to track the
problem/solution histories. Therefore, the traditional
Call Center operation must adopt flexible software that
makes the crucial information readily available to the
Help Desk/Call Center operator. But because it happens so
often in the true Help Desk, we tend to engineer our
skills to go for a first-time fix, where possible. In the
Call Center, the limited nature of the knowledge makes
the first-time fix the exception.
Although Help Desks have
come to use Call Center-style telephone technologies
for incoming calls, the Help Desk does not have
anything like the Call Center's need for the management
of inbound calls and agent/operator productivity. But
the Help Desk tends to allow or encourage the customer
to open a service negotiation.
The concepts of Help
Desk and Call Center are not interchangeable.
Although they borrow ideas from each other, they
serve different purposes and use different practices
to achieve their end. For more information, please
call 800-410-6667.
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Our Call Center and Help Desk Service Includes:
- Call Center Services
- Help Desk Service
- Custom Message Delivery
- Offsite Receptionist Call Center
- Overflow Reception Call Center
- Live-e-Support Call Center
- Order Taking Call Center
- Help Desk Call Center
- Brochure Fulfillment
- Market Research Call Center
- Telemarketing Call Center
- Reservations Call Center
- Emergency Response
- Call Center Dispatch Service
- Appointment Booking
- Database Management
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ABCI'S Call Centers
provides greater Help Desk Outsourcing and nationwide Help Desk service
to a wide variety of both business-to-business and business-to-consumer
clients that require call center Help Desk service. Outsourcing your
call center Help Desk service requirements can be on a
project-by-project basis or through developing a long-term more
comprehensive partnership.
"Call Center and Help Desk Service Shoppers Know
ABCI As A Quality Call Center Service Provider"
ABCI'S outsourced call center and Help Desk
service are ranked best among clients, and consultants. Call center
and Help Desk services are also available for all of California,
especially Los Angeles County and Orange County.
ABCI has operated call centers for over 50 years providing
service to over 10,000 clients. ABCI works with each client
on an ongoing basis to customize our service applications to assist
you in meeting your business objectives.
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