Service desks that adopt a customer-first mentality and welcome the latest technologies will safeguard themselves against outsourcing by becoming a business-critical support function.

Mikkel Svane, the CEO of Zendesk explained to ServiceDesk360 that while commodity elements of IT are increasingly being outsourced, the trend is reversed for IT support.  “Businesses have stopped outsourcing call centres and helpdesks overseas, because customers responded by building their own ‘pirate’ support groups.  It’s easier to find answers from your peers than deal with an organisation thousands of miles away who doesn’t understand your business.”

With business users increasingly bypassing the internal IT department with BYOD, the service desk is no longer guaranteed its position of power.  Svane says that service desks must start thinking more like external service providers, focusing on quality of support and forging long term relations to remain integral to the business.  “The subscription-based economy means a business must think about the long term relationship – it’s not what the customer buys today, it’s what they buy in ten years from now.”

Calling the shall we/shan’t we support user-owned device debate ‘crazy’, Svane puts the issue into a clear historical perspective.  “When email first arrived, some businesses wouldn’t let staff use it to send messages outbound.  We still see businesses forcing staff to use IE7 and its hampering performance.  Of course you need to support the technology your business is using.”