how many IT techs/desktop support should a company have for 400-500 end users?

how many IT techs/desktop support should a company have for 400-500 end users? This is for a call center, if that makes a difference. We only have 2, does that seem low?

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Kai123

It depends on the IT environment that they are working in. I would guess 2 staff could easily look after 400 staff in a Citrix environment in a helpdesk role.

I went for an interview that had 3 staff looking after well over a thousand users across Ireland and the UK doing mainly helpdesk, IT support, T1 and T2 stuff. Then you had a network admin, voice admin and VM guy.

JoJoCal19

I think two is plenty for 400-500 end users, unless they are all clueless people who keep wrecking their machines in one fashion or another. My first IT job I was the JOAT who did all of the information security, networking, web maintenance, server admin, hardware support, software support, and general desktop support for a small manufacturer with around 240 workstations and end users. My manager only handled programming and database duties, and even then he had started training me up on DB and I started doing some DBA duties on top of everything else. So I'd say two people is more than enough for 500.

pinkydapimp

The answer: As few as you can get away with. Thats the goal. Do more with less. So trust that if your organization can get away with 1 person.... they will do it.

kbowen0188

We have two dedicated Help Desk staff and two back-up Help Desk that mainly do field tech work. We have around 700 employees and this is usually more than enough for us. Of course, it differs depending on the environment.

Kai123

pinkydapimp wrote: »

The answer: As few as you can get away with. Thats the goal. Do more with less. So trust that if your organization can get away with 1 person.... they will do it.

Sounds like when programmers code themselves out of their jobs!

I know someone who create a program during downtime in his work while doing some kind of 1st line support in a team of 10+ for the purpose of making his job easier, which ended up replacing half the team due to the efficiency of it. Management loved him for it and gave him a great job working from home supporting the program while doing some web development mixed in.

rsutton

I work for an MSP and we support around 4000 users with a team of 15 technicians which comes out to roughly 250 users/tech. That includes full help desk, network management, server management etc.

N2IT

Kai123 wrote: »

I know someone who create a program during downtime in his work while doing some kind of 1st line support in a team of 10+ for the purpose of making his job easier, which ended up replacing half the team due to the efficiency of it. Management loved him for it and gave him a great job working from home supporting the program while doing some web development mixed in.

I love this story thanks for sharing.

GreaterNinja

Typically its anywhere from 1 tech for every 100 to 400 internal customers. 500-1000 would be on the extreme. For a call center I would think 1 for every 200-500 as those issues are commonly duplicated or re-imaged.

Akaricloud

It really depends on the users needs. I've worked in environments where one tech per 400 people was enough, and those that needed 1 per every 50 or so. The company I worked for that had 1-2 year hardware replacement schedules, phones, cell phones, constant monitor upgrades, and many, many complex programs required a lot of techs.

Verities

I think it really depends on the volume of work, including projects; I was the only tech support for ~120 users and it was stressful. I wish I had another body to help me out. Of course, I was also working on IDFs, running cables, fixing weather equipment, and a working a Windows 7 tech refresh.

MeanDrunkR2D2

I've been in places where we had no call center and the desktop was the first, second and third line of defense. It all comes down to the issues and how often they happen, how fast the company is growing, and how hard every team member works. In that case we had 5 desktop admins for roughly 2000 users. We were always busy and had easily more than enough work to do. What would have made it easier is if we had a tier 1 call center with maybe 2-3 employees to field and send out more difficult tickets to the desktop team. The biggest downside was that we never had downtime to really work on projects that needed to be handled and done. They were an afterthought and really only addressed when a timeline was coming to a close and we needed to focus on that, which we did. That would take at least 1 desktop guy away from the queue and make it very busy for the rest of us. I would say in a perfect world, if you have a good desktop staff and helpdesk, you could get by with about 3-4 for a smaller company with 500 end users. (some helpdesk, some desktop, server teams not included)

techfiend

2 seems low to me, but are you feeling overworked or have a lot of downtime? If neither, it should be alright.

In my situation I'll be the third IT member supporting 25-30 onsite employees because of growing demand.

gorebrush

I used to look after 120 by myself and that was hard enough. I'd want 3 at least for that many users.

bugzy3188

We handle about 600 users with 3 of us, and honestly, there is a lot of downtime. Management is pretty relaxed about it but we all spend a lot of time surfing the web, and studying. With that said we work in and environment mostly comprised of tech savvy engineers, which is both a gift and a curse.

gc8dc95

For Desktop level, we have about a 1:400 ratio. We do have a helpdesk though.

msteinhilber

My current role, jack of all trades with a focus on security and all of our Juniper gear (mostly SRX's and EX switches), we have 2 full time employees and one part time employee for over 50 offices and over 1200 users. Myself and the IT manager handle everything beyond the most very basic tasks, the very basics are left up to our part time person who came out of retirement after running our tech training dept for training on our proprietary software. We taught her how to handle basics like mapping network drives, installing printers, setting up users, password resets, etc. For everything beyond her ability she acts as triage for the calls and sends what she can't handle to me or my boss. It's a nightmare really, the vast majority of everyday is spent putting out fires from the calls and emails coming in. The end result is a very limited amount of time to work on any projects in the works. This often means big projects are extremely slow to implement and smaller to medium sized projects are often skipped until absolutely required - usually in the form of whatever the project was meant to upgrade or replace having blown up and demanding immediate attention.

I keep telling myself I'll get out of this role, it's been nearly 8 years here now and I'm starting to feel trapped/complacent.

BerkshireHerd

We have 5 techs for approx 1300 users and 1600 pc machines, we also handle printers and voip phones as well