Service Desk (ITSM)

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A Service Desk is a primary IT capability called for in IT Service Management. It is intended to provide a Single Point of Contact ("SPOC") to meet the communications needs of both users and IT and to satisfy both Customer and IT Provider objectives. Many organisations have implemented a central point of contact for handling Customer, User and related issues. This function is known under several titles often interpreted as having increasing levels of business relevance, including:

The IT Infrastructure Library approach to a Service Desk acts as the central point of contact between service providers and users/customers, on a day-to-day basis. It is also a focal point for reporting Incidents and for users making service requests. It handles incidents and service requests, as well as providing an interface, with users, for other Service Management activities such as Change, Problem, Configuration, Release, Service Level and IT Service Continuity Management.


The Service Desk pro-actively keeps users informed of all relevant service events, actions and service changes that are likely to affect them. The Service Desk is in the direct line of any impact on the Service Level Agreement and as such should be kept rapidly informed of any planned or unexpected changes or service unavailability.

The Service Desk differs from a Call centre, Contact centre or a Help desk by offering a more broad and user centric approach, which seeks to provide a user with an informed single point of contact for all of their ICT requirements. A Service Desk seeks to facilitate the integration of business processes into the Service Management infrastructure. In addition to actively monitoring and owning Incidents, and user questions and providing the communications channel for other Service Management disciplines with the user community, a Service Desk also provides an interface for other activities such as customer Change requests, third parties (e.g. maintenance contracts), and software licensing.

The objectives of the Service Desk are:

  • Providing a single (informed) point of contact for customers
  • Facilitating the restoration of normal operational service with minimal business impact on the customer within agreed levels SLA and business priorities.

The common Service Desk functions include:

  • Receiving calls, first-line customer liaison
  • Recording and tracking incidents and complaints
  • Keeping customers informed on request status and progress
  • Making an initial assessment of requests, attempting to resolve them or refer them to someone who can
  • Monitoring and escalation procedures relative to the appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA)
  • Identifying problems
  • Closing incidents and confirmation with the customers
  • Coordinating second-line and third line support
NB: While ITIL suggests that the Service Desk is a function and not a process, it has been observed that the Service Request process followed by the service desk is in fact a process.
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