The ITIL definition of a service desk (service operation) is a single point of contact (SPOC) between the service provider and the users. TechTarget defines the term "service desk" in the same way as a communications center providing an interface between a company's employees, customers, and business partners. It allows end users to connect easily to the IT department.

What Does the Service Desk Do?

Most often, it is an IT-related function, the service desk is responsible for managing tickets as well as service requests, incidents and incidents in addition to the communication with users. Service desk professionals depend on different IT help desk tools to accomplish their job done. Modern service desks can adapt to changing operational conditions and are more agile and responsive. They are process-oriented and strive to fulfill all requirements within the business's IT policies.

Help Desk vs. Service Desk

While the functions of a help desk as well as a service desk may seem identical, they have important differences. The help desk offers technical assistance to customers as well as users. They also assist them with specific actions or tasks.

A service desk looks at business needs rather than focusing solely on addressing user needs and takes the broader business context into consideration. It is focused on increasing the efficiency and performance of IT technicians, meeting service-level agreements and shaping the way IT professionals deliver their services to internal staff and customers. Help desks, which are a part of many companies, is a component of the IT Service Desk. It is accountable for the satisfaction of users, end-user issues, and requests.

What are the duties of Service Desk Managers? Service Desk Manager?

The professional in charge of the service desk has many responsibilities, such as:

Controlling service requests, problems and incidents

Affecting IT issues of all departments within the organization

Monitor customer concerns

Facilitating employees' onboarding

Monitoring reports and metrics such as:

First-call resolution rate (FCR): The percent of tickets that are resolved in the first response. FCR measures how efficient and fast your service desk works. This is important as it will help increase the efficiency of your customers.

Cost per contact: The total cost of operating a service desk with respect to the number of tickets or calls made during an epoch. This is an indicator of the productivity of a service desk's operations.

Incident/Ticket Volume: Tracking the number of tickets that are brought to a service desk can provide an overview of activity time and is an indicator of the need for staffing and schedule.

Tickets that are repeated: For repeat tickets, organizations can keep track of Mean Time To Detect (MTD) and Mean Time To Resolve (MTTR). These metrics show how efficient self-service IT support is in learning from past mistakes.

Trending in ticket sales This method allows you to track the trending data regarding the number of tickets sold to a specific issue during the specified time frame. It can help determine if there are any other automation requirements that need to be met in order to end or fix the issue.

Backlog of Tickets by maintaining a record of ticket backlogs and aiming to increase efficiency, you'll be able to reduce high support costs and administrative cost for staffing.

Modern service desks also offer advanced capabilities such as:

Automating the calculation and/or enforcement of employee time allocations to service requests. This allows employees to track their efficiency and track the events that are most demanding to handle.

Automating escalates and remediation with rules-based processes: This allows you to recognize the key features of the incidents that are reported and then route them to the correct team of technicians.

A service help desk, when integrated together with other IT management tools, helps provide seamless execution of IT processes within an organization.