What is a Service Desk?

 It is important to differentiate between what is the Traditional Help Desk (which we talked about in the previous point) and what is Help Desk in the Management of Information Technology Services ( IT Service Management , ITSM).

To avoid confusion, this last variable is usually called the Service Desk.

A Traditional Help Desk is limited in terms of incident management, support and provision. In other words, its functions are basic compared to an ITSM Service Desk .

ITSM serves a strategic vision that adds value to the company, and it does so through IT solutions in which it integrates people, processes and technology best desk jobs.

ITSM contributes to making the connection between IT and the strategy that an organization considers.

Specifically, the strategy proposed by ITSM helps organizations measure the impact of IT on their business processes. That is why we speak of an evolved Help Desk, that is, an IT Service Desk (service desk ).

Objectives of an ITSM Service Desk

An IT Service Desk focuses on business requirements, attends to the implementation of the IT process, monitoring and continuous improvement, as well as solving existing problems.

It can be said that the IT Service Desk is reactive and proactive. It is reactive because it fulfills the functionality of what the Help Desk is as an incident and event management unit, but it is also proactive when applying the practices of continuous improvement of services, such as those proposed by the ITIL ( IT Infrastructure Library ).

Differences between Help Desk and ITSM Service Desk

Traditional Help Desk

It allows to attend incidents within the technology infrastructure or the services it provides.

Facilitates communication between the user and the support team.

It keeps the infrastructure and services active on a day-to-day basis.

Keep a record and control of cases.

Communication with users is established by telephone, email or in person.

It has basic skills of a call center .

Manage telephone services.

Refer requests to other departments for processing.

It receives the request and redirects it to the technicians specialized in that task.

It offers support services supported by its own or external technicians to the company.

It also has more technical skills to manage incidents.

Its human team has basic IT skills and knowledge to resolve certain incidents in the first instance.

IT service desk

It fulfills all the functions of a Help Desk.

It allows planning, structuring and providing the delivery of IT services.

It is the central and single point of contact between users and ITSM.

Helps restore service to the user with minimal impact and generates reports.

It includes a catalog that defines what resources and processes are needed for each service.

It allows the service to be requested by the user.

Use satisfaction surveys and KPIs ( key performance indicator r - key performance indicator ).

Provides support to all departments of the organization under the name of enterprise service management ( business service management ).

Also, the concept does not mean the same thing for all companies.

These aspects are addressed in this article, which has been written especially for you, you want to improve the management processes of your company with a view to achieving success.

Support levels of a Help Desk