Why Managed Help Desk Services Benefit Multi-Unit Retailers

Today’s retailers are under increasing pressure to deliver a superior customer experience in a demanding digital landscape. 

As a result, retailers are keenly aware just how much is riding on their technology. To ensure systems and applications are always ready to support a great customer experience, retail companies are increasingly choosing to use an outsourced help desk.

Here are a few reasons why.

Better Use of IT Leadership’s Time & Resources

Using an outsourced help desk helps IT leadership to bring increased focus on innovation. For example, your teams could use this extra time to finalize a vision for digital transformation, and plan to adopt other new technologies that will help deliver a better customer experience.

As the retail sector has become more technologically dependent, CIOs are increasingly managing an omnichannel supply chain. As a result, what used to be a role concerned with infrastructure to support enterprise resource planning systems has become intricately involved with critical stages of retail management.

Faster Resolution of Issues

Each retail environment develops its own ecosystem as a result of different technologies that become woven together over time. This can be a challenge for some vendors to support. The right technology support vendor will take the time to unearth the intricacies of your technology environment and support it with advanced knowledge of how it works. The result of this intimate knowledge is a significantly faster resolution time.

Cost Savings

Employing a help desk in-house can be costly because, besides employees' salary and benefits, you are also often paying for support at times when you don't need it. In addition, technological support needs tend to come in waves and surges, not a steady, evenly timed stream of application and systems problems. 

As an example, most retailers experience a seasonal element in their sales. Those jumps in sales often correspond with a jump in help desk needs. With a managed help desk you only pay for the help desk assistance you use. 

Expertise

Recruitment, training, infrastructure implementation, and operations management are all costly and difficult for companies without in-house expertise in running support centers. 

Top-tier technology support providers specialize in recruiting, training, staffing, and managing support centers as well as providing the advanced back-end systems required for optimal support center performance. This enables companies to focus on their core business competencies. 

Scalability

Expert technology support providers have developed recruitment and training procedures that enable them to provide clients with a well-trained support workforce that can easily be scaled up or down depending on fluctuating or seasonal needs. 

In Conclusion

Retailers know customers have high expectations when it comes to their experiences with the company. However, as CIOs have become more and more responsible for this experience, they recognize the need for someone else to handle the standard troubleshooting and maintenance that can come up with any IT environment.

Have you been considering an outsourced IT help desk for your retail company? If so, we can help you evaluate your help desk needs and assist you in using the best solutions to support the customer experiences you want to deliver. Click here to get in touch.