Under a quality approach where trust, availability, capacity, and security are fundamental, organizations recognize the importance of information technology (IT) in supporting and executing operations as essential. Delivering quality service has become the difference between success and failure for organizations, coupled with the competitive level of IT service requirements, tailored to the needs of the organization and the user.
High-quality support for computing infrastructure and customers is critical to achieving any organization's objectives. Often, given the variety and distribution of architectures, the administration and support of each environment is addressed independently, which becomes very costly, wastes time, and usually becomes an unimportant task.
In order to provide adequate support for user needs and requirements, a Service Desk has been created as a point of contact between users and the service. The Service Desk is responsible for and provides input to incident management, a function that forms part of the IT service support process. 1
In general, in order to meet both the organization's objectives and customer requirements, organizations implement a contact and customer or user service center which, together with a consolidated team, invests time in planning, training, reviewing, researching, 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 Hotline.
There are many variations in the name of the function, the most common being 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 licenses, service level management, configuration management, availability management, financial management for IT services, and IT service continuity management.
The Service Desk provides value to the organization in the following ways:-
It acts as a strategic function to identify and reduce computing infrastructure support costs.
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Supports integration and change management through the combination of processes and technology within the organization.
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Reduces costs by promoting efficient use of resources and technology.
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Provides support to optimize investment in the management of the services provided by the organization.
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It helps ensure customer satisfaction in the short term.
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It allows you to identify opportunities for business improvement.
The methods used in the Service Desk are not limited to phone calls or personal attention; they can be extended to customer service, users, and support staff to record, update, and consult their requirements, as shown in the figure below:
Among the key benefits of consolidating the Service Desk function are the following:
- Restore normal IT service operations as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on the organization's operations.
- Involve the customer or user, because the service is focused on them.
- It allows you to identify opportunities for improvement.
- Involve third-party suppliers.
- Improve the quality of services.
- Trained personnel participate.
- Reduce costs.
- Improve information security by having stricter control over incidents, problems, changes, and updates in the IT infrastructure.
- Provides transparent information through the Service Desk.
- Implement standardized procedures.
- Increases customer or user satisfaction.
- It incorporates new elements that enable the automation of support tasks that were previously performed, allowing staff to be reassigned to other critical business activities.
- Improve monitoring in network administration.
- Generates periodic reports on incidents and problems with the IT infrastructure.
- It allows us to provide faster solutions to users for their reported problems, as well as to prioritize solutions.
It should be noted that the consolidation of the Service Desk function is not isolated, but rather goes hand in hand with the proper establishment of IT service delivery and support processes within IT service management. Therefore, its implementation is not immediate, but rather takes a considerable amount of time (one to two years) before it can be said to be fully consolidated.
Once the Service Desk function has been consolidated, it is advisable to monitor it through a continuous improvement program, with the aim 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 for the evaluation of the performance of the function and related processes.
Similarly, a genuine third-party assessment will increase objectivity, confidence levels, and benefits, as well as identify strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats in the current performance of the function.
Bibliography OGC ITIL “Best Practice for Service Support.” London, England. The Stationery Office (TSO). 2002, 2nd edition.NOTES
1. According to the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework, which provides a proven method for achieving a common planning process in IT Service Management, this is subdivided into two different areas: IT Service Support generally focuses on day-to-day operations, supporting IT services for optimal execution, while IT Service Delivery, unlike the former, deals with long-term planning and improvement in the provision of IT services.
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