Service Desk, the Nerve Center for Business IT
A service desk is defined as “a communications center that provides a single point of contact (SPOC) between a company and its customers, employees and business partners.” The purpose of a service desk is to provide appropriate help to users in a timely manner. The service desk of any enterprise must be designed in such a way it handles both incidents and service requests cordially, efficiently and effortlessly. Incidents refer to those events that lead to disruption in service availability or quality. While service requests refer to the assistance and support required with a routine task, such as helping a user to change a password.
Besides that, it performs various other activities namely,
· Incident management
· Problem management
· Configuration management
· Change management
· Release management
· Service-level management
· Availability management
· Capacity management
· Financial management
· IT service continuity management
· Security management
Based on the skill level and resolution rates for service calls, service desk is of different types namely
· Call Center
It is a centralized office utilized for providing product support and responding to information inquiries from consumers. The most important aspect of call center is that it handles only telephone correspondence.
· Contact Center
Unlike call centers, this facility handles all client requests, contacts, and information inquiries through a variety of mediums such as telephone, fax, letter, e-mail, and online live chat.
· Help Desk
Help desks solve problems with computers and other similar products.
Service desk has attained greater importance with the popularity of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Hence, today service desk is an important Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) tool. If ITIL is properly deployed it can bring in a lot of benefits for enterprises such as
· Improved IT services through the use of proven best practice processes
· Improved delivery of third party services
· Improved ROI of IT
· Improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery
· Reduced IT operational costs
· Improved use of skills and experience
· Increased and improved effectiveness and efficiency of an organization
· Improved interaction and functioning with the business and customer community
· Improved productivity
Similarly, service desks if properly deployed can help enterprises in
· Ensuring reliability, availability and continuity of IT services
· Providing support for logging, tracking, resolution and reporting of help desk incidents and service requests
· Restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible
· Minimizing the adverse impact on business operations
· Maintaining best possible levels of service quality and availability
· Providing accelerated response to the executive users within the customer organization
· Automating user provisioning/de-provisioning process using workflow and identity management tools
With enterprise service desk being the nerve center for business IT, what enterprises require is a reliable partner who can provide efficient and cost effective IT Services through a consistent set of tools and processes.
Related Links: identity and access management
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