What is a service desk?

A service desk is the main contact point between employees/service providers, handling issues, refunds and more. A common example is the IT Service desk.

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What does an IT service desk do? What is IT service desk vs IT help desk vs IT Service Management (ITSM)? What are the key capabilities of service desks? How can an IT service desk benefit your company? Service desk best practices What technology supports the service desk? The tools your need for a service desk Is ServiceNow right for IT Service desk support?

IT is the backbone that supports all users, both within and outside a company, enabling them to access, interact with and leverage essential digital services. Employees seeking assistance with software, customers requiring support for a product, suppliers interfacing with procurement systems, and business partners striving to integrate their services – each type of user depends on swift, reliable and seamless access to IT resources to ensure that they can perform their roles effectively and efficiently.

However, IT environments can be extremely complex, spanning multiple platforms and systems. For employees, navigating these increasingly intricate landscapes can be a difficult prospect. From connecting with teams and departments to finding solutions to technology-related issues, employees at all levels need clearly defined paths for accessing help resources and receiving service and support. To address this need, businesses employ modern IT service desk solutions.

 

Expand All Collapse All What does an IT service desk do?

Acting as communication centres where employees can request help and receive IT support, IT service desks are also designed to address broader business needs and increase the user’s tech experience in the workplace. IT service desks facilitate communication between other service management and the user community – usually the organisation’s employees and other stakeholders. They also play a role in capturing change requests, maintaining third-party contacts, assisting with problem management and managing software development.

Serving as the nexus of communication between employees and their organisation’s IT department, the IT service desk ensures that the technological needs of the employees are met swiftly and efficiently. This critical role is often unseen, but plays an integral part in ensuring the smooth functioning of an organisation’s IT landscape. Whether assisting with password resets, deploying patches or handling more complex troubleshooting, the service desk is the first line of support that helps employees navigate their digital resources.

Service desk is integrated into a range of processes, including:

  • Supplier and partner onboarding and offboarding
  • Employee onboarding
  • Business continuity  
  • Reporting and metrics management
  • Service monitoring
  • Incident management
  • Request management
  • Change management
  • And more...
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What is IT service desk vs IT help desk vs IT Service Management (ITSM)?

Often, businesses will use the terms ‘help desk’ and ‘service desk’ interchangeably. This becomes even more confusing when one introduces ITSM. But while IT help desks and IT service desks are similar, they serve different functions within an organisation and have unique sets of goals – all of which are supported by the ITSM team. Here, we take a closer look at each of these terms and how they relate to one another.

IT service desk

Service desks function in a broad sense. They usually service wider business needs rather than only focusing on addressing a user’s immediate problem. The goal is to be proactive in improving IT processes within an organisation, and they are used to identify opportunities to run IT processes more efficiently. Some key traits of service desks include:

  • Full integration with ITSM (and/or ITIL) processes
  • SLA tracking
  • Self-service with an integrated service catalogue
  • CMDB communication and integration
  • Full lifecycle change management
  • Problem and incident management
  • Workforce and vendor optimisation

IT Help desk

Help desks are more tactical solutions, helping resolve employees’ needs, issues and incidents. A help desk is usually reactive in nature and is meant to provide fast and efficient remediation to specific problems as they arise. They can either be part of or separate from the larger service desk operations.

Some key traits of help desks include:

  • Using tracking for incoming incidents
  • Offering basic incident and service request management
  • Providing first- and second-level support and escalating issues as needed
  • Providing basic self-service options for employees  
  • Acting as a point of contact for IT support

ITSM

ITSM stands for IT service management, and is an approach designed to deliver, manage and improve the way that information technology services are provided within a business. Rather than focusing purely on the technical components of these services, ITSM emphasises the importance of delivering IT services that meet the needs of the organisation and its employees. At its core, ITSM is built on the idea that IT must be delivered as a service. This means concentrating on the employees’ needs and experiences, continuous improvement, and incorporating best practices wherever possible.

As a strategic approach, ITSM includes several key processes. These include:

  • Asset management
  • Change management
  • Configuration management
  • Continual improvement management
  • Incident management
  • Knowledge management
  • Problem management
  • Release management
  • Request management
  • Service-level management
  • Workflow management

Although ITSM plays a key function in IT support, it is not limited to this role. Instead, ITSM incorporates the full range of functions and processes related to IT delivery within an organisation. As such, help desks and service desks fall under the umbrella of ITSM.

What are the key capabilities of service desks?

A well-structured and efficient IT service desk doesn’t solely serve to deal with immediate tech issues; it’s integral to the overall management of the company’s IT landscape. Service desks add value by ensuring continuity, facilitating change and enhancing the end-user experience. To do this, they rely on several essential capabilities:

  • Addressing service requests
    Service requests can fall under a broad range of categories, including technical issues, software installation, password resets or hardware upgrades. The service desk acts as the first line of support, addressing and resolving these requests to ensure minimal disruption to the employees’ workflow.
  • Expanding departmental knowledge
    A service desk knowledge base includes information about known errors, step-by-step processes, and common issues and their solutions. Companies can also encourage ongoing learning and organisational growth as their knowledge base expands.

  • IT tracking
    Service desks utilise ticketing systems to track and manage issues. This ensures that no problem is overlooked while allowing for effective workload management. Additionally, tracking provides valuable data that can be analysed to identify patterns, trends and areas for improvement.
  • Managing changes
    The service desk plays a critical role in managing changes (such as updates and patches), ensuring that they are implemented with minimal disruption to services or the employees who depend on them. This includes testing, scheduling, implementing and reviewing changes within dynamic environments.
  • Monitoring IT incidents
    Incident management is a key function of the service desk. This involves identifying, logging and addressing IT incidents to restore normal service as quickly as possible. By efficiently managing incidents, service desks help to minimise the impact on business operations.
  • Providing self-service
    Many modern service desks offer self-service options for employees. This could be through knowledge base articles, FAQ sections or automated tools for common issues such as password resets.
  • Troubleshooting
    Beyond the resolution of immediate issues, the service desk plays an essential role in troubleshooting more complex problems. This may involve working with higher-level IT professionals or interfacing with external vendors. Troubleshooting helps in identifying the root cause of recurring issues, thereby enabling the organisation to implement more permanent solutions.
How can an IT service desk benefit your company?

IT service desks are highly beneficial to companies of all types and sizes, regardless of their service or product. It is crucial for a company to provide a point of contact between employees and an IT department so that they can have their issues resolved in a timely and effective manner, and IT teams can keep operations running smoothly. The advantages of working with an effective, optimised health desk include the following:

Cost savings

When a service desk is properly staffed and implemented with the latest AI-based automation, it can effectively manage a generous portion of the routine IT workload. It is a lower-cost option that transfers simpler work from high-cost engineering teams and IT professionals. This frees up valuable technology experts to focus more of their efforts on strategy and more complex issues that need to be addressed. In other words, the right service desk allows businesses to get more out of their existing IT team.

More accurate problem prediction with AI

Proper AI tools can help organisations to identify and address service issues before they become something larger. IT service desks acting as early warning systems can enable proactive problem management, service changes and preventative maintenance to reduce the impact of outages and service issues.

Reliable user-sentiment insights

Many key processes and IT services begin at the service desk. As such, it is often the primary point of contact between employees, IT services and business processes. Monitoring these interactions may provide useful insight into user sentiment, as it relates to products, services, needs and the organisation in general.

Reduced mean time to repair (MTTR)

With an efficient service desk in place, businesses can reduce the average time it takes to repair or resolve an incident. This is achieved through streamlined processes, an enriched knowledge base and effective issue tracking, leading to minimised downtime and disruption.

Optimal operational efficiency

Service desks centralise IT support, leading to more consistent and effective responses to user requests and incidents. Through automated processes, standardised responses and shared resources, the operational efficiency of the IT function is substantially improved.

Better alignment between business and IT

Service desks ensure that IT processes and services are aligned with business objectives and needs. They act as a conduit between the business and IT, ensuring that the technology supports and drives business goals, rather than getting in the way.

Increased reliability

By providing a single point of contact for all IT issues and requests, a service desk ensures reliable support for employees. This promotes trust and confidence in the IT department, making it a dependable partner for both internal and external stakeholders.

Heightened productivity

With prompt resolution of issues and efficient handling of requests, employees spend less time dealing with IT issues and more time focusing on their primary tasks. This results in increased employee productivity across the organisation.

Enhanced user satisfaction

An effective service desk significantly improves the end-user experience. By providing timely, accurate and helpful support, user satisfaction is improved. This can have a positive impact on staff morale.

Improved IT asset management

Service desks are centrally important in managing the life cycle of IT assets within the organisation. They handle everything from procurement, deployment, maintenance and disposal of hardware and software. This leads to cost savings, risk reduction and optimal usage of IT assets.

Service desk best practices

Although the IT environment continues to evolve, the concept of an IT service desk is one that has been around for some time and is well established throughout a range of industries. This widespread adoption has helped businesses refine their approach, resulting in several tried-and-tested best practices for service desk implementation.

Employee engagement

  •  Provide end-user, omni-channel self-help portals, with the best service desks leveraging chat bots that work day and night to resolve common issues.
  • Use service-level agreements (SLA) and impact assessments to differentiate requests to take care of the most crucial requests first.
  • Resolve issues at the point of engagement to avoid any hand-offs or escalations.
  • Examine employee behaviour and management expectations to ensure that needs are being understood and met.
  • Administer customer satisfaction surveys regularly to identify how clients feel about the product or service.

Management and reporting

  • Ensure that any hand-offs and escalation needs are understood to avoid poor customer experiences or missing any SLAs
  • Use real-time reporting and analytics to monitor how services are functioning and apply any corrective actions before issues escalate into problems
  • Leverage ITSM systems to re-engineer processes and optimise utilisation of IT staff resources
  • Ensure that management understands the service desk operations to effectively address challenges that service desk associates face
  • Use analytics from ITSM systems to reduce time and effort in generating reports and to help identify the best automation opportunities

Technology

  • Provide “hands-free” automation for more common user requests, such as access, password resets etc.
  • Implement workflows in your helpdesk software to ensure that there is a process for escalations and hand-offs
  • Promote integration between service desk stems and IT operations – such as event monitoring and AIOps – to predict or prevent issues before they arise
  • Facilitate and record communication between requestors/employees and agents
  • Track the root cause of issues in the ITSM system
  • Simplify change management with out-of-box templates supporting simple to more complex change types, along with automation to help determine which type a particular change is

Change management

  • Establish standardised processes for change management to ensure consistency and minimise the possibility of errors.  
  • Use the features of your service desk software to automate and streamline important change management processes. This can include capabilities such as automated approval workflows, change calendars and integration with incident management systems.
  • Keep track of all changes in a comprehensive change log, including information on who requested the change, who approved it and what the outcomes were.

Knowledge management

  • Provide answers to FAQs for employees, reducing the need for agent contacts.
  • Keep all knowledge records up to date and accurate by reviewing and purging unnecessary information when needed.
  • Implement a knowledge management system to place knowledge in a location where it can be accessed by all authorised individuals.

Self-service

  • Ensure that the knowledge base is up to date, accurate, comprehensive and easy to navigate, and that it delivers a better self-service experience.
  • Design the self-service portal to be user-friendly and intuitive; employees should be able to quickly find the information or tools that they need.
  • Use AI-powered chatbots to answer simple queries, guide employees to relevant knowledge base articles and automate certain tasks such as password resets.
  • Regularly promote the use of the self-service portal to employees to ensure that they are aware of it and how to access it.
  • Seek feedback from employees about their experience with the self-service portal and then use those insights to improve the self-service options.

AI-supported recommendation

  • AI-supported recommendation engines should be integrated as deeply as possible into IT service desk operations, providing intelligent recommendations and automating repetitive or mundane tasks in order to improve employee and IT productivity.
  • Continuously train and update AI systems with the latest data to ensure their continued effectiveness.
  • Collect user feedback to improve recommendation algorithms and provide better solutions.
  • Maintain full compliance with data privacy regulations and ethical guidelines. Invest in effective data security solutions to protect company and customer data.
  • Build trust in the system by being transparent about how recommendations are created.
  • Regularly measure the effectiveness of the AI-supported recommendation engine in terms of its ability to speed up resolution times, improve user satisfaction and reduce service desk workload.

Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

  • Create a repository of data (or database) that stores information about your IT environment and components, to deliver IT services.
  • Contain assets or configuration items (software, hardware, development code) used by the organisation.
  • Establish relationships between assets showing the makeup of services.
  • Incorporate automated discovery to help alleviate work in “finding” configuration items.
What technology supports the service desk?

A service desk is not a standalone solution; to provide value for users and businesses, it requires strong software. The following are essential technologies for getting the most out of your IT service desk:

Artificial intelligence and AIOps

AI technologies, including machine learning and natural language processing, are increasingly being deployed as part of service desks. These technologies can power chatbots for customer interaction, automate routine tasks, assist in decision-making and provide predictive analytics beyond the accuracy or scope of human agents. Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) further leverages big data, collecting a variety of information from disparate IT operations tools and devices to automatically identify and react to potential operational issues in real time.

Incident management

This is the core area for IT service desks. Help desk ticketing orchestrates both incidents and service requests throughout the service desk and related support teams. Essential functions include alerts, escalations, automated routing, workflow management and SLA management.

End user self-service

There are many issues that generate user calls into an IT service desk. Some of these issues could be resolved without a call if the end user had the right tools and access to information. Self-service provides agents with the time and opportunity to resolve more complicated requests. Aspects of self-service include a self-service diagnostic tool, service request form, automated common processes and a knowledge search option.

Knowledge management

Knowledge management maximises operational performance by providing a resource to service desk agents. Essential functions include a knowledge database; separate end user and agent knowledge data; a known issue and error database; suggested keyword searching based on an incident description; and knowledge management to support a knowledge lifecycle.

Service desk management

Reporting functions help IT service desk leaders to understand, manage and optimise the costs of services, which in turn helps them to manage user satisfaction, ensure SLA compliance and identify issues that may be impacting the business. Reporting also gives management insights into services to help them make informed decisions. Some key capabilities include service performance dashboards, agent metrics, known-issue analytics, SLA conformity reports and major incident management capabilities.

CMDB

A configuration management database (CMDB) is a crucial technology for managing IT infrastructure. A CMDB is a database that contains all the relevant information about the components of the information system used in an organisation’s IT services and their relationships. Change management

Change management tools help manage, control and track all changes within the IT infrastructure. They streamline the process of requesting, planning, implementing and reviewing changes, ensuring that they are carried out according to controlled and established processes with minimal disruption to services.

Centralised IT platform

A centralised IT platform allows for integrated management of all service desk services from a single location. This brings together various IT service management processes – such as incident management, problem management and change management – under one umbrella, enhancing visibility and control and ensuring that everyone involved is working from the same source of truth.

The tools your need for a service desk

Finding the right tools for your service desk is crucial to supporting operations and helping resolve issues, and is often referred to as IT Service Management (ITSM). The service desk is the point of contact between employees and their organisation’s IT team, which means that tools such as knowledge management and reporting are critical to providing IT service desk solutions. The right tools also provide easy setup and configuration, enable proper collaboration, adapt to user needs, and scale with the growth of a team or organisation. This helps IT support desks deliver the right support to help employees get the most out of their IT resources.

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