service desk manage

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The IT Service Desk is intended to be a primary point of engagement between users and an IT organization. According to ITIL, the service desk is the single point of contact (SPOC) between the service provider (IT) and users for day-to-day activities. A typical service desk manages incidents (service disruptions) and service requests (routine service related tasks) along with handling user communications for things like outages and planned changes to services.

The IT helpdesk function was born in the late 1980s as a support capability to fix IT issues. It was a highly technical function focused on the technology rather than the end users. Early IT helpdesks didn’t have the concept of SLAs or time-based targets for resolving issues. It wasn’t until ITIL came onto the scene in the 1990s, capturing IT Service Management best practices, that the concept of the user-centric IT service desk began to emerge. The service desk was seen as an essential part of “managing IT like a service”.

Modern technology trends including cloud-services, the widespread use of 3rd party components in the IT ecosystem and advancements in discovery and monitoring capabilities have led to the integration of stand-alone helpdesk ticketing systems into more comprehensive ITSM platforms that serve as the hub of operations not just for the IT service desk, but the entire IT function. As companies seek to further modernize and pursue Digital Transformation initiatives, the IT Service Desk is evolving again to become more business centric, with greater awareness of business processes and data – in many cases becoming an integrated part of companies’ business operations.

A help desk is a place that a person can contact to get help with a problem. Typically, the term is used for centralized help to users within an enterprise and is sometimes referred to as a “call center”. The helpdesk may be a place that customers call to place orders, track shipments, get help with products, and so forth or an internal place that employees go to seek help with IT systems, HR questions or other business issues. It offers a single point of contact for users to get assistance.

A help desk in the context of IT is a function responsible for answering the technical questions of users (typically employees, contractors, and suppliers). Companies in the business of selling IT products and services to customers often have externally facing IT help desks as well to respond to questions from their customers. The questions and their answers are usually transferred using e-mail, telephone, website, or online chat. For those companies that subscribe to ITIL definitions. the help desk is a component of the service desk, concerned with end-user functionality and providing incident management to ensure customers’ issues are resolved quickly.