White label IT support for technology companies

In the last 12 months we’ve experienced several enquires about white label IT support from technology companies.

For many, this has been driven by an increase in demand for their products – particularly those selling SaaS solutions and online tools – coupled with increased 1st and 2nd line IT support ticket volumes. We’re also seeing higher demand for out-of-hours or 24/7 support, to provide coverage for users outside of traditional business hours, and multilingual IT support for companies who are experiencing global growth.

To this end, we thought it would be helpful to provide some information about white label IT services and what best practice looks like.

What should you expect from white label IT services?

The clue is in the name! The best white label managed service providers deliver a customer experience that gives the end user the impression they’re dealing with you. This means not only communicating as your brand but also understanding your culture and protecting your organisation’s reputation.

A great white label managed service provider becomes part of your team. Extensive culture training as well as in depth product training ensures analysts provides the service your customers expect from you. Find out more about the importance of cultural fit here >

1st line IT support is more than referring to a knowledgebase!

If you’re outsourcing 1st line support, product training is extremely important. From conversations with new customers we’ve learnt that not all 1st line IT support providers deliver the resolutions expected. Some providers simply refer to the technology company’s knowledgebase (which is often already available to end users), and anything not included is triaged and escalated to 2nd line.

1st line support, in our view, should do more than triage issues and provide copy and pasted responses: this is what 0 line (also known as T0 and L0) is for. Self-service options like FAQs, ChatBots and knowledge banks are increasingly the first port of call for end-users who need support. Therefore, if they raise a ticket, they’ve already exhausted self-service support and need someone with technical expertise to resolve their issue.

A 1st line service desk analyst should know your technology product inside out and have received training in order to resolve common issues at first contact. For example, each team member (analyst) should undertake a customer specific learning programme; including a business overview, culture and philosophy, technology environment, application training, historic issue profiling and, if applicable and geographically possible, a site visit to meet key stakeholders.

Usually, when we on board a new customer in the technology sector, the customer’s technical team will initially provide our analysts with system / application training as well as any knowledge bank articles already written. We will then continually update this resource with new fixes or information as we are made aware, as well as undertaking training in-house for new team members. When knowledge bank articles are not available, we will develop this content ourselves.

As a result, analysts are able to provide more first contact fixes for end users and avoid escalating 1st line tickets to 2nd line. This is how 1st line should work; reducing the number of tickets your technical team has to deal with, allowing them to focus on other activities and resolve more complex technical issues at developer level.

Global technology platforms require global IT support

Cloud technology has broken down many barriers including borders between countries. If your technology product is available to users around the world, support also needs to be available in their time zone and native language.

One option is to provide local IT support either internally (if you have technical teams available in different regions) or by outsourcing to a local managed service provider. However, a more straightforward option is to partner with a provider with global reach and multilingual analysts.

A 24/7/365 IT service desk team covers all time zones as well as anyone working or using your products outside of normal business hours. The cost of providing out-of-hours or 24/7 IT support is usually less with a managed service provider than staffing this requirement internally.

IT support can also be provided in key languages, with bilingual or multilingual analysts available to respond to and resolve tickets in English and other languages, and staffing aligned to relevant time zones.

For many technology companies, 24/7 and multilingual IT support has been a key driver in their ability to grow in overseas markets.

Does your business need a white label IT support?

Here are 3 things to ask potential providers:

  1. What is your definition of 1st line support?
  2. What’s your on boarding process?
  3. How do you approach service improvement?

We’re always happy to have an informal chat about managing IT support and ensuring end users get the best possible experience. If you would like to speak to a member of our team please get in touch, or book a meeting using the calendar link below:

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