What is Service Desk?

Service Desk is a ticket management solution that enables businesses to create powerful and efficient work-flows for both internal and external support departments.

The Support Ticketing Management System (also known as Service Desk or Help Desk Ticketing System or Remote Help Desk Support System) allows MSPs (via administrators and help desk staff) to keep track of user tickets, respond to them, reassign them to appropriate departments or organisations, and generate reports, among other things.

Types Of Service Desks

In general, there are four different types of service desks:

Local Desk: A small or medium-sized business’s needs are met by a local desk, which is located within or near the company’s premises. It would aid in meeting the needs of an enterprise’s country-specific or location-specific organisations. This service desk, however, would be insufficient to manage enormous quantities of calls or service requests.

Desk at a central location: The consolidated service desk, which helps manage bigger quantities of tickets/calls with fewer staff members, is a more cost-effective and efficient approach for ticket management. Merging local service desks into a centralised desk will help an organisation that maintains them.

Virtual Desk: This is the most prevalent sort of service desk utilised by businesses, corporations, and IT firms. A single, centralised Service Desk manages all tickets raised by all types of devices and entities in various geographical areas via the Internet. Personnel in diverse geographical locations can also address and manage the tickets.

Follow the Sun Support: To provide round-the-clock service, several businesses consolidate Service Desks in multiple locations.

Why Do You Need Service Desk Software?

Do you use sticky notes and emails to keep track of your customer requests, or have you switched to spreadsheets?

None of these, however, are appropriate solutions for keeping track of all those numerous requests that your clients will continue to generate…

You’ll need to keep note of what the problem is, who caused it, and what kind of service level agreement (SLA) is in place to resolve it, among other things.

The ITarian Service Desk Software Management module, which is incorporated into the ITarian MSP, allows you to manage and respond to client requests in a simple and efficient manner. It enables your consumers to assist themselves by providing a place for them to report issues and track their progress without having to email, call, or text you. You can simply see the status of each ticket on the consolidated dashboard, including whether it’s open, closed, or overdue, as well as specify and view the various priority levels.

With comprehensive data and reporting, ITarian gives you and your customers a clear picture. There’s also an integrated knowledge base that gives your clients immediate solutions to frequent questions, allowing them to help themselves and lowering your IT staff’s workload.

With ITarian MSP’s total integration of IT Service Desk with all of its modules, tickets may be produced for activities required by other modules and the actions executed without ever leaving ITarian, giving your team a single, comprehensive IT management solution.

Key Benefits & Capabilities of IT Service Desks

Anytime, anywhere access

The cloud-based system allows you to gather tickets from a variety of sources, including phone, online portal, email, and endpoint monitors, as well as view account tickets via a mobile app.

Effective communications

Personalized welcomes, automated emails and updates, and scripted responses ensure that clients have the information they require throughout the resolution process.

Efficient workflows

Configurable ticket categories, automatic ticket routing, SLA tracking, and escalation procedures help you properly prioritise, handle, and escalate (when necessary) inquiries.

Visibility and reporting

You can see what’s going on with service requests thanks to online dashboards that are simple to use and extensive tracking and reporting.

Shared expertise

By documenting recognized issues and their resolutions, an integrated knowledge base helps your team avoid “reinventing the wheel.”

User experience

The use of a branded customer portal improves uniformity and trust in the support process.

What’s the Difference Between a Service Desk and a Help Desk in ITSM?

Difference between Service Desk and Help Desk

Understanding the difference between a help desk and a service desk is easier with the following explanations:

A help desk concentrates on break-fix, whereas a service desk assists with break-fix as well as service requests and information requests.
IT-centricity gave birth to a help desk, whereas IT service-centricity gave birth to an IT service desk.
Some people still believe that a help desk gives assistance while a service desk provides service, which means that a service desk focuses on providing a service to end-users that resembles customer service.
A help desk is viewed as an add-on to existing IT events, but a service desk is a part of a service-based IT service delivery and IT support ecosystem built around the “service lifecycle.” It’s possible that this is why ITIL prefers the term service desk to help desk.
ITIL experts would tell you that a help desk is tactical, whereas a service desk is strategic. This will undoubtedly change in different organizations.
It’s also possible to think of a help desk as a subset of a service desk.

As a result, a “service desk” is an ITIL-based help desk, and help desks are generally seen as outdated in comparison to the more modern service desk. The fact that the term “help desk” is not present in ITIL publications may have influenced this decision. ITIL-based marketing of ITSM solutions, various alternative service-based ITSM offerings, or the fact that the term “help desk” is not present in ITIL publications may have influenced this decision.

To summaries, the distinction between a help desk and a service desk is largely subjective. Regardless of the differences, an organization’s help desk or service desk will eventually be called whatever it wants. Whatever you call your IT support capabilities, it’s critical to understand what a modern service desk or help desk should deliver, regardless of the name you choose.

Difference between Service Desk and ITSM

ITSM encompasses all activities related to the design, production, delivery, support, and management of IT services throughout their lifecycle. Even though “IT support” is the most popular concept of ITSM among IT users, ITSM encompasses much more than merely fixing day-to-day concerns. End-to-end management of these services should be handled by the IT staff. It also has a considerably bigger scope than ITSSM, which is larger still than a service desk tool.

ITSM refers to a set of IT management skills that are tied to the supply and support of IT services. A service desk is a subset of ITSSM (and consequently ITSM), and it usually consists of the following:

Self-service
Management of incidents
Management of service requests
Management of information
Capabilities for reporting
Problem and change management have strong ties.

Key Qualities of the Help Desk, Service Desk, and ITSM

Help Desk

Keeping track of the knowledge base
Procedures for problem resolution and escalation
Observing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) (SLAs)
End-user self-service choices
Assume the role of a single point of contact (SPOC) for IT issues.
For all incoming incidents, use a tracking solution.
Ticket tracking, email notifications, and routing are all automated.
Management of Basic Incidents and Problems
Only a few connections with different IT Service Management Processes are available.
Outside of the help desk, several applications/areas are serviced by specialized groups.

Service Desk

Catalogue of Service/Self-Service
Connect to CMDB, Asset Management, and Asset Discovery systems.
Integration with other IT Service Management processes to the nth degree
Assist with all IT applications, areas, and business processes as a single point of contact.
Make it possible for the business to adhere to Service Level Management agreements.

ITSM

Reduce your IT expenses.
Customer satisfaction should improve.
Enhance flexibility and gain a competitive advantage
Increase the speed with which new IT services can be launched.
Improve the service quality
Reduce risk and improve governance

How IT Ticketing System Works?

The primary goal of an IT ticketing system is to allow visitors to a website to report problems. It might be anything from site navigation to products or services, and employees, consumers, clients, or business partners could use it. To access the site’s help desk and create a ticket, the user just clicks a button. When it comes to dealing with client inquiries or reported difficulties, the ticket system is the best solution.

Help Desk vs. Service Desk

The distinction between a service desk and a help desk is sometimes misunderstood. The names are often used interchangeably, but in most circumstances, they are distinct.

Service desks are a single point of contact between IT administration and its users, focusing on the company strategy. If you’re a managed service provider, the help desk focuses more on end-user demands, such as your customers and workers, or your clients (MSP). They offer incident management services to ensure that a customer’s issues are managed quickly and effectively.