Under a quality approach where trust, availability, capacity and security are basic, the importance of information technology (IT) in the support and execution of operations is recognized as fundamental by organizations. The delivery of a quality service has become the difference between success and failure of organizations, together with the competitive level of IT service requirements, adequate to the needs of the organization and the user.

High quality support for the computing infrastructure and for customers is critical in achieving the objectives of any organization. Often, due to the variety and distribution of architectures, the administration and support of each environment is addressed independently, which becomes very costly, time consuming and usually becomes an unimportant task.

To achieve an adequate support to the needs and requirements of the users, an activity arises as a point of contact between the user and the service, a Service Desk, responsible and supplier of inputs to the incident management, a function that is part of the IT service support process. 1

Typically, to meet both organizational objectives and customer requirements, organizations implement a customer service and contact center that, together with a consolidated team, invests time in planning, training, reviewing, investigating and working closely with customers or users to adopt proactive and structured practices. This function is also known as:

  • Help Desk.
  • Call Center.
  • Service Desk.
  • Customer Hot Line.

There are many variations on the name of the function and the most common ones are Help Desk, Call Center and Service Desk, however, the focus of each is different, as detailed below:

The Service Desk extends the range of its services and presents a more comprehensive approach to achieving global objectives through the integration of the Service Management infrastructure with the organization's processes. It also provides an interface for activities such as customer change requests, maintenance contracts, software licensing, service level management, configuration management, availability management, financial management for IT services, as well as IT service continuity management.

The Service Desk provides value to the organization in the following aspects:
  • Acts as a strategic function to identify and reduce IT infrastructure support costs.
  • Supports the integration and management of change, through the addition of processes and technology in the organization.
  • Reduce costs by promoting efficient use of resources and technology.
  • Provides support to optimize the investment in the administration of the services provided by the organization.
  • Helps ensure customer satisfaction in the short term.
  • Allows the identification of improvement opportunities for the business.

The methods used in the Service Desk are not limited to telephone calls and personal attention, but can extend to serving customers, users and support staff to register, update and consult their requirements, as shown in the figure below:

Among the key benefits of consolidating the Service Desk function are the following:

  • Restores normal IT service operations as quickly as possible and minimizes adverse impact to the organization's operations.
  • It involves the customer or user, because the focus of the service is on him.
  • Allows to identify opportunities for improvement.
  • Involves third party suppliers.
  • Improve the quality of services.
  • Trained personnel participate.
  • Reduce costs.
  • Improve information security by having a tighter control of incidents, problems, changes and updates in the IT infrastructure.
  • Provides transparent information through the Service Desk.
  • Implements standardized procedures.
  • Increases customer or user satisfaction.
  • It incorporates new elements that allow the automation of support tasks that were previously performed, allowing the reassignment of personnel to other critical business activities.
  • Improved monitoring in network administration.
  • Generates periodic reports of IT infrastructure incidents and problems.
  • It allows to provide faster solutions to users in their reported problems, as well as to prioritize the solutions.

It is worth mentioning that the consolidation of the Service Desk function is not isolated, but is combined with the proper establishment of the IT service delivery and support processes within IT service management, so its implementation is not immediate, but takes considerable time (from one to two years) to be able to say that it has been fully solidified.

Once the Service Desk function has been consolidated, it is recommended that it be monitored through a continuous improvement program, with the objective of maintaining service quality and identifying the emergence of new technologies that favor the creation of new business capabilities and improve the organization's competitive advantage, based on indicators and metrics that allow the performance of the function and related processes to be evaluated.

Likewise, a real third-party assessment will increase objectivity, confidence levels and benefits, as well as identify strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats to the current performance of the function.

Bibliography OGC ITIL "Best Practice for Service Support". London, England. The Stationery Office (TSO). 2002, 2nd edition.

NOTES

According to the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework, which provides a proven method for achieving a common IT Service Management planning process, IT Service Management is subdivided into two different areas: IT Service Support generally focuses on the day-to-day operations supporting IT services for their optimal execution and IT Service Delivery, unlike the former, deals with long-term planning and improvement in the provision of IT services.

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