With so much new technology enabling people to work from anywhere – while still communicating effectively and accessing the digital resources they need – many traditional questions about how to deliver remote IT support are becoming less relevant.
The classic reasons multinationals’ co-source IT support – reducing costs, increasing availability, and accessing a deeper pool of expertise – might seem undermined by this technology. Why not bring support back in-house and run a virtual team across locations, providing round-the-clock cover across every time zone? Unfortunately, it’s rarely that clear-cut, and there are real challenges to weigh.
The Challenges of Bringing Remote IT Support in-house
The question of availability
You need enough people to cover every time zone you operate in – so will you recruit in each region, or provide out-of-hours support from one location? Recruiting everywhere gets expensive fast; centralising can introduce cultural and language barriers.
Telephone-based technical help is hard enough at the best of times, and language gaps can undermine it entirely – leading to under-use, lost productivity, and end-users attempting their own bad fixes. On-site support for a widely distributed workforce is harder still to match against the SLA a co-sourced provider can offer.
Overcoming skills shortages
Can you recruit suitably skilled people at all? Good technical staff are difficult to find and come at a premium – and even if you find and afford them, keeping them is another matter. A remote support team needs team spirit, knowledge-sharing, and a visible career path, or providing support becomes an ongoing recruitment headache.
Everything comes at a price
Modern cloud-based tools address many of these issues, but they come at a cost – and you’ll still need effective leadership and budget for on-site remote support where it’s needed frequently.
Do What’s Right for Your Business
The right support model is rarely fully in-house or fully external. The strongest answer is co-sourcing: your team and a global, multilingual, AI-first support capability operating as one.
Allied delivers this across 64 countries, with digital workers resolving 84%+ of issues end-to-end and multilingual specialists handling what needs judgement – the coverage and economies of scale of an external provider, without taking work or careers away from your own people.
Founded in 1992, Allied Worldwide is an AI Managed Services Provider – not an MSP using AI. We deliver technology support across 64 countries through FusionWork™, the fusion of human and digital workers, under ISO 9001 governed processes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is the best model for remote IT support?
For most organisations it’s neither fully in-house nor fully outsourced, but co-sourcing: an internal team working alongside a global, multilingual support capability as one blended operation. This gives round-the-clock, multi-timezone coverage without the cost and recruitment burden of staffing every region in-house.
What is co-sourcing in IT support?
Co-sourcing blends a client’s own team with a provider’s human and digital workers into a single capability. Unlike traditional outsourcing, work isn’t taken away from the client’s team – they keep their context and careers while the provider adds scale, coverage and digital execution.
How does AI improve remote IT support?
AI-first support puts digital workers on the first line of resolution, handling volume and repetitive issues instantly and around the clock. At Allied, this delivers 84%+ auto-resolution, so human specialists focus on the issues that genuinely need judgement.
Can remote IT support work across multiple languages and time zones?
Yes. Allied provides a 24/7/365 multilingual service desk across 64 countries, removing the language, cultural and availability barriers that undermine single-location or in-house remote support.
Is remote IT support secure and reliable?
Allied Worldwide’s remote support runs on ISO 9001 governed processes with proactive monitoring and incident management, delivering consistent service levels across distributed and remote workforces worldwide.
