Growing Pains? Strategies to Scale Helpdesk Support Cost-Effectively

As businesses expand, helpdesk and IT functions are often first to feel the impact, faced with the challenge of maintaining service quality and managing costs while scaling support to meet increasing demands. It’s a delicate balancing act that has implications for stakeholder satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value — and by extension for the success and sustainability of the wider business.

The focus for leadership therefore has to be not just scaling up at all costs, but doing so in a way that preserves the fundamentals of quality support, ensuring that as the business grows, critical support systems have the resources needed to service that growth without compromising quality.

However, as companies grow, the helpdesk strategies that have served them well in the past may not be practically or cost-effectively scalable. In most cases, new techniques, tools, or approaches are needed to maintain — or indeed improve — the quality of service that both new and existing customers or stakeholders receive as the user base expands.

In this 5-minute read, we’ll explore:

How to know when it’s time to scale up your support provision
How you can do more with your existing helpdesk resources
The technologies that can help scale up support painlessly
Why self-service options are important to effective scaling
The changing role of human agents within helpdesk support

Recognizing the need for scalable helpdesk support

There are telltale signs that suggest support systems are under-resourced — and point towards a pressing need for optimization and innovation. Increased wait times, a surge in unresolved tickets, and negative customer feedback indicating dissatisfaction or service issues are all clear indicators that the current setup is straining under the pressure of continued growth.

As products or services evolve, these issues can become compounded by the increasing complexity of the issue that IT or helpdesk functions have to deal with — impacting key metrics such as first response and resolution times and testing the limits of the SLA. And as businesses grow, new pressures emerge. A recent article by helpdesk software provider Klaviyo identified three key challenges faced when scaling: new layers of management to organize the growing workload; the need to accurately account for time spent across teams and departments; and the increasing diversity of customer needs and expectations.

Failing to address these signs can have far-reaching consequences — reduced customer and stakeholder loyalty, negative word-of-mouth, and ultimately, damage to business growth and reputation. This is particularly crucial in the IT sector, where customer support is not just a service but a critical component of the user experience. Scaling helpdesk support effectively requires a strategic approach that encompasses enhancing existing processes, leveraging new technologies, and perhaps most importantly, understanding the evolving needs of customers.

Enhancing helpdesk service practices and processes

Enhancing helpdesk service practices and processes is crucial in scaling support operations effectively — and the most obvious starting point is refining existing frameworks to maximize efficiency. Simple yet impactful changes can significantly improve customer interactions — such as taking advantage of automation features in current support platforms, optimizing workflows to reduce the number of touchpoints needed to resolve a single issue, and providing self-service guides to the most commonly encountered issues on the company website, thereby reducing the number of inbound tickets.

Another area where “quick wins” can be achieved is the redesign of contact points. A recent guide to support optimization by HelpScout suggests that a clear and well-structured contact form can lead to more precise customer queries, which are easier to resolve quickly. This proactive approach not only enhances the customer experience but also streamlines the resolution process, reducing the time spent on each ticket.

Leveraging technology for scalability

Today’s AI customer support tools can handle a significant volume of routine inquiries, freeing up human agents to tackle more complex issues. By analyzing customer data and past interactions, these systems can provide tailored responses and solutions, enhancing the customer experience.

This level of personalization, traditionally only feasible in smaller operations, can now be achieved at scale, ensuring that growth in user numbers does not dilute the quality of individual customer experiences.

In a recent guide, Zendesk, a leading provider of customer service and CRM systems, identifies three key requirements for dealing with a support request: routing, resolution, and reporting. In each of these areas, the right technology can introduce new efficiencies and cut costs:

Routing: Correctly identifying the issue at hand within a support request and assigning it to the best-positioned agent to handle it (nowadays this may include diverting it to an AI-based system, rather than a human agent, if appropriate)

Resolution: Providing agents with all the information necessary to resolve the issue (or resolving it automatically, as above) and communicating the outcome with the customer who reported it in a way that they are easily able to understand, as well as soliciting and analyzing their feedback on the process.

Reporting: Analyzing support activities at a macro or granular level to categorize issues, reporting on time and resources used, deriving insights or suggestions for process improvements, and forecasting future demand based on historical trends.

By adopting AI-powered tools to handle many of the routine and repetitive tasks that have the greatest resource impact, IT and helpdesk departments can build a scalable, efficient, and responsive customer support system, capable of growing in tandem with the business while maintaining, and even enhancing, the quality of customer service.

Expanding self-service options

A key strategy in scaling helpdesk support is empowering customers through self-service options, and an accessible and comprehensive knowledge base is instrumental in this regard. By developing a repository of helpful articles, FAQs, and guides, businesses can empower customers to find solutions independently, thus reducing the demand on direct support channels.

This not only alleviates the pressure on the customer support team and reduces overheads, but also caters to a growing preference among users for self-service. Research by HBR supports this, revealing that, “Across industries, fully 81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative.”

For greater interactivity, community forums provide a platform where customers can engage with each other, share experiences, and offer solutions. This peer-to-peer support system not only fosters a sense of community among users but also acts as a valuable resource for resolving issues without direct intervention from support staff. The collective knowledge and experience of the user base become a powerful tool in addressing common queries and challenges — and a valuable resource for the business, offering unique insights into potential product or service improvements.

Building and supporting a robust team

As AI and self-service solutions reduce the number of routine queries, the role of the customer support team evolves to focus on more complex and nuanced issues. This shift underscores the need for a well-trained, robust team. Clear job descriptions, targeted recruitment, and a thorough onboarding process help to ensure that new hires are well-equipped to meet the demands of their roles.

Once the team is in place, continuous support through training and mentoring becomes crucial. Regular training sessions, workshops, and access to the latest industry practices ensure that team members are always at the forefront of customer service excellence. Alternatively, outsourcing all or part of the support function to specialist teams can provide a flexible way to manage volume spikes or handle specialized queries. This approach allows for rapid scaling of support capabilities without the long-term commitments associated with hiring full-time staff.

Monitoring and continuous improvement

An essential component of scaling customer support is the continuous monitoring and improvement of its processes. Regularly reviewing key customer support metrics provides invaluable insights into the effectiveness of your current strategies. Tracking response time, resolution rate, customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and net promoter score (NPS) can reveal areas needing improvement and help benchmark performance against industry standards.

Adapting strategies based on customer feedback and market trends is also critical. Customer expectations and technological advancements are constantly evolving, making agility a vital trait for any successful customer support operation. This might involve updating self-service resources, refining training programs, or embracing new communication channels as customer preferences shift.

Benchmarking and tracking the success of IT and helpdesk teams requires more than just analysis of the data — it involves understanding the story behind the numbers. It’s a continuous cycle of identifying patterns in customer interactions and using these insights to make informed decisions that further improve the customer experience. This iterative process of assessment and improvement ensures that customer support remains a dynamic function that responds to evolving demand and scales readily as your business grows.

Conclusion

Effectively scaling up helpdesk support requires constant adaptation — striking a balance between technological innovation, process optimization, and human expertise. For companies looking to navigate this transition smoothly, a partnership with an established industry expert like SourceCX can provide valuable guidance and expertise, helping to integrate best practices and scale painlessly.

Ultimately, the goal is to grow your IT and helpdesk functions cost-effectively and efficiently to anticipate and exceed the evolving needs of your customers as your business continues to expand. And the potential rewards are substantial — from improved customer satisfaction and loyalty to stronger financial performance.

Background/references:

https://kayako.com/blog/the-easy-way-to-scale-your-helpdesk/
https://www.upwork.com/resources/scale-customer-support
https://www.zendesk.com/blog/scaling-support-team-common-questions-answered/
https://www.helpscout.com/helpu/scaling-customer-service/
https://front.com/blog/6-top-strategies-for-scaling-customer-support