They're horrible at it, and I'm wondering if I can't just do it better. Switching vendors is tough because our case/incident volume is so low that most companies either won't deal with us OR will deal, but at outrageous prices.

So I'm toying with using something like Grasshopper and Zendesk to basically create my own help desk. One of the big unknowns is the staff: are there people willing to be on-call for an 8-hour shift, yet be paid per case? Or paid per minute of support time? Is that even legal? I can't afford to pay for two or three full 8-hour shifts, which is why we have an outsourced vendor now (where agents are shared across multiple clients and we're only billed per minute).

Any ideas or suggestions, especially from folks who have done something similar?