What Does a Service Desk Do that a Help Desk Doesn’t


Many long-term IT professionals grew up in an IT technical support environment. But as organizations move into IT service management (ITSM) environments, the focus has shifted to providing an IT service center for customers and employees, rather than a call center. This leaves many IT professionals wondering what an IT service desk is and how it differs from a traditional IT help desk.

Given that, here is my humble opinion on what the difference is between an IT help desk and an IT service desk.

What the traditional IT help desk does

Traditional IT support services focus on downtime / remediation activities and basic provisioning services such as user profiling, network authorization management, shutdown activities, and email management. They support the deployment of new IT technologies and services. IT help centers mainly support internal users, some supporting external clients as needed. They function as a single point of contact (SPOC) for IT support activities.

IT technical support is reactive. Solve day-to-day issues, such as resetting passwords, maintaining printers, and helping people with device problems. Many people qualify IT technical support as tactical support for IT strategy, both to implement new initiatives and to help keep those initiatives going. An IT help desk often uses a tracking system like BMC Track-IT! software that manages automated ticket registration and routing, self-service options, and a knowledge base. Ticket reporting capabilities can also support IT and adhere to key service level agreements (SLAs).


Traditional IT support services perform a subset of ITSM and Service Desk functionality, primarily in the areas of Incident Management, Problem Management, Knowledge Management, and IT Provisioning and Provisioning. A help desk may exist without a corresponding service desk, but an IT service desk almost always integrates the responsibilities and resources of the help desk into its operation.


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