All too often organizations use the terms “service desk” and “help desk” interchangeably. While at first glance, these two terms may seem as though they describe the same thing, the approach to implementing them and the focus is significantly different. So, in this article, we will discuss the differences between a service desk and a help desk, the importance of an IT team throughout a service life cycle, and why ESM is so important.

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

So, how can a company differentiate between a service desk and a help desk to avoid internal and external confusion? Essentially, the differences between a service desk and a help desk boil down to the type of support they provide and the ways in which they provide support. Before going over the differences between a service desk and a help desk, let’s first define what these two terms describe.

What is a Help Desk?

A help desk primarily focuses on resolving technical issues a user might experience. These issues could stem from user error, bugs in a program, or any number of other IT-related issues a user can experience. This is commonly referred to as a break-fix process as the intent is for the help desk to fix a broken piece of IT software or hardware regardless of the cause of the break. The types of issues a help desk can resolve are typically limited to a single ITSM (IT Service Management) activity.

Most help desks utilize some form of a ticketing system. A ticketing system allows users to report issues to an IT department then the IT department can go through individual tickets providing resolutions to each reported issue. While this type of system provides a great way for the IT department to organize user issues, it does not provide resources for users to fix their own issues, feature requests, or general customer service inquiries.

Here are a few indicators that your organization uses a help desk, not a service desk:

• The IT team relies almost entirely on a ticket system for issue reporting and management.
• All help desk activities focus almost entirely on resolving issues instead of providing solutions.
• Little focus on providing comprehensive resources that allow users to fix issues on their own.

What is a Service Desk?

Service desks aim to provide more comprehensive user support and customer engagement. They still include a break-fix process, but they go far beyond simply fixing user issues. A service desk also provides resources for their users such as how-to guides, resolve issues beyond those related to specific software or programs, and much more including IT hardware support. This gives users a single point of contact for all IT-related issues and needs.

On top of resolving potential IT-related issues, a service desk also provides a point of contact for users to request new features or other IT-related needs resulting in greater customer engagement. These requests tie into an organization’s problem and change management processes so organizational issues that can be resolved with technology receive appropriate consideration.

Here are a few indicators that your organization uses a service desk, not a help desk:

• Provide support for all IT-related issues while also providing solutions to problems that could be solved with technology.
• Continuously expand available resources teaching users how to best use IT hardware and software.
• Handles requests for new services or features as well as figures out ways to implement new requested services or features.

So, What Differentiates a Service Desk from a Help Desk?

Now that we’ve defined service desks and help desks, we can go into a bit more detail regarding what differentiates them. Essentially, all tasks covered within a help desk are also covered within a service desk, however, a service desk goes beyond just those tasks. So, a help desk is basically a small portion of a service desk.

While help desks aim to resolve issues, service desks aim to provide a service to users. This can come in the form of the way a service desk ties into the problem and change management processes or providing resources showing users how to utilize IT technology more effectively. So, the main difference between a help desk and a service desk is the scope of the tasks covered and how those tasks are completed.

The Importance of Your IT Team During the Service Life Cycle

The importance of your IT team throughout the service life cycle cannot be understated. But, before we go over the importance of your IT team, let’s quickly outline the service life cycle. The service life cycle includes five stages.

1. Service Strategy: When executive managers determine business goals for a new or updated service.
2. Service Design: Phase of designing and developing a new service or updates to an existing service.
3. Service Transition: Integrating and testing all required assets within the new or updated service to ensure it functions as intended.
4. Service Operation: This phase is where your service desk comes into play providing operational support for the continued success of a new or updated service.
5. Continual Service Improvement: An ongoing phase that seeks new ways of improving existing services.

Most organizations only bring in the IT team during the development, transition, and operation phase. Typically, these organizations rely on an ITSM strategy instead of an ESM strategy which leaves the IT team out of important decisions related to their expertise. However, by not incorporating the IT team throughout the service life cycle, organizations regularly miss key requirements or potential workarounds to known issues. This results in the entire service life cycle costing more as issues that could have been resolved immediately were left to grow. These issues left to grow often cause a service desk’s biggest pains.

Moving Beyond ITSM to ESM

So, given that organizations regularly misunderstand the importance of their IT team during the service life cycle, what can your organization do to better involve the IT team? This is where ESM (Enterprise Service Management) comes into play. With ESM, instead of only relying on the IT team to integrate new services and resolve issues, IT teams look to support and enhance the overall enterprise.

An ESM strategy gives IT teams the resources and tools they need to provide productivity-enhancing and cost-reducing technology to their organization. This results in fewer IT-related issues arising while also enhancing the overall productivity of the entire enterprise. You can get started with an ESM strategy by utilizing an ESM platform to kickstart the transition.

Run2biz offers a complete solution, which brings ITSM / ESM ‘operation’, ‘management’ and ‘strategy’ vision and control using simple and friendly interfaces.