December 7, 2017
The IT department is responsible for maintaining and enabling a wide variety of business resources. For most businesses, those resources are crucial for their continued success, and among them, the contact center poses a particular challenge. Contact centers are often the primary customer-facing business unit. The entire reputation of the business rests upon the customer’s continued access to the contact center. For other businesses, the contact center is the primary revenue generating tool of the organization.
In either case, it is very important that the IT department flawlessly support the contact center at all times. Yet, there are numerous challenges that stand in the way of fulfilling that responsibility.
IT Challenges for the Contact Center
- Limited IT Budget:
The through-line for every challenge is going to be the budget. According to Gartner in 2016, the average IT budget was predicted to shrink by 0.5%. Meanwhile, businesses only become more dependent upon their technology investments.
- Limited Expertise:
There aren’t many experienced IT professionals available in the job market, and due to the increased demand for top talent, the average salaries for specialized administrators continues to rise. Pair that with stagnant or shrinking IT budgets, and you have a clear conflict.
Explore the reasons why the IT hiring market is so competitive in our blog post, “4 Reasons Your IT Recruitment Is Struggling.”
- 24 Hour Availability:
It is not uncommon for businesses who support a contact center to extend its hours of operation around the clock. IT departments for small to medium sized businesses already struggle to staff IT professionals for overnight shifts simply to monitor the network. The added responsibility of supporting the contact center at all times only increases the burden.
Managed Services as an Attractive Solution
A managed services agreement with a reputable and experienced provider specifically addresses all three of the main contact center IT challenges.
- Limited IT Budget:
With Mindsight, the cost of a managed services agreement is typically less than a single full-time employee. This provides clients access to a team of professionals to match the business’s precise needs.
- Top IT Talent:
90% of Mindsight engineers have earned top certifications in the industry, and our team is highly trained and experienced in all areas of the IT environment. As technology consultants, Mindsight is able to attract and keep top IT talent in the industry, and a managed services agreement leverages these professionals to your benefit. Specifically in the contact center space, our engineers have decades of experience with all manner of contact center technology and solutions.
- 24 Hour Availability:
Standard with all Mindsight managed services agreements is 24 hour network monitoring services. Our team sets up automated immediate alerts to inform your team of any unexpected network activity.
In the end, managed services serves as a more than viable solution to the challenges facing an IT department. While a managed services agreement will be valuable in a wide variety of applications, it has particular value for IT departments asked to support a contact center.
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About Mindsight
Mindsight, a Chicago IT services provider, is an extension of your team. Our culture is built on transparency and trust, and our team is made up of extraordinary people – the kinds of people you would hire. We have one of the largest expert-level engineering teams delivering the full spectrum of IT services and solutions, from cloud to infrastructure, collaboration to contact center. Our highly-certified engineers and process-oriented excellence have certainly been key to our success. But what really sets us apart is our straightforward and honest approach to every conversation, whether it is for an emerging business or global enterprise. Our customers rely on our thought leadership, responsiveness, and dedication to solving their toughest technology challenges.
Contact us at GoMindsight.com.
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