What is a Service Request in ITSM?

[Johnson Perry]

When you speak about IT Service Management or ITSM solutions, you refer to the maintenance and structuring of an organization’s IT services. ITSM delivers well-designed assistance to the end-user.

When you talk about Service Request in ITSM, it refers to a formal request from a user, asking for something to be provided.  This request can be for information or for something that’s missing in the first place. This can be regarding a firmware update for instance. 

What is the difference between a Service Request and Incident?

The question that vexes even the most seasoned professionals! And therefore, let’s talk about ITIL V3, which is the framework that forms the base of most service desk software. It is split into service requests and incidents. 

An Incident may be defined as an unplanned interruption in IT automation or drop in the quality of an IT service. Essentially, you could say:

- A Service Request is planned

- An Incident is unplanned

Examples of a Service Request (made by the end-user on a regular basis)

- I need a new laptop

- I need an external hard drive

Examples of an Incident (one that arises out of the blue)

- Help! My laptop isn’t working

- A security issue has come up

Request types under Service  Request Management

1. A request for a service delivery action
2. Feedback & complaints
3. Information request
4. Request to access a service or resource
5. Request for provision of a service or resource

All this and more can be handled by an ITSM platform that aligns IT customer services with business goals. One such tool is ServiceNow, a popular medium of IT service delivery. It is based on the belief that the power of technology must be leveraged to reduce complexity and make work a better place.

When using an ITSM system such as ServiceNow, a user can request a service that will lead to the creation of a new task for that service category. Service fulfillers can then complete these tasks to fulfill the request.

New request tasks are automatically assigned but if no fulfillment group or user is mentioned, new records are assigned to the service category manager.

Here’s how the process works for ServiceNow:

• Navigate to <Your service application> > Assigned to me
• Select a record
• Review information
• Complete the task with compliance to department policies and procedures
• Mark the State of the service request record as Closed Complete
• Update

Explore ServiceNow to streamline service requests at your organization.