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Help Desk VS Service Desk – The Major Differences

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16 February 2021

How would you define the current IT assistance structure in your organisation? Does your in-house IT team resolve customer issues through a break-fix process? Or, does it solely focus on service requests and offer solutions for basic IT problems?
Your answer to these questions is what determines whether your business’ IT setup is a 24/7 service desk or help desk.
While you might’ve thought both these terms are synonymous, they actually have different meanings and purposes, as per the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM).
That said, at Redpalm, we’ve put together this comprehensive guide explaining the major differences between a help desk and a service desk.
Let’s take a look!

Help Desk – All You Need to Know

What is a Help Desk?

Primarily used for tactical reasons and solving the end user’s immediate technical issues, an IT help desk is a simple tech support function incorporated in a business either as a subset of IT service desk or as a separate process.
While help desks are reactive in nature, its definitive goal is to offer solutions for customer issues as efficiently and quickly as possible.

The Core Functions of a Help Desk

When it comes to your business’ help desk, it’s essential functions include, but aren’t limited to:

  • Acting as the single point of contact (SPOC) for all your customers, so they know exactly where to go when facing a problem.
  • Leveraging a tracking system for every incoming IT incident and issues.
  • Automating ticket tracking and routing alongside sending email notifications to your team members and customers.
  • Offering service request and incident management capabilities.
  • Integrating with various ITSM practices, such as knowledge and configuration management; however, this might be limited.
  • Creating a service catalogue to review information about request changes and service offerings.
  • Offering end-users a self-service options.

For more information on how to set up an optimised help desk for your organisation, contact our team today!

Top 3 Benefits of Having a Help Desk

1. Improves Customer Satisfaction

When your customers come with questions or issues related to your products and services, a help desk can analyse and resolve them as efficiently as possible. After all, offering easy and quick resolutions to issues is what helps improve customer satisfaction.
Moreover, when you provide immediate assistance, it not only saves you a customer but also helps drive loyalty.

2. Enables Your Business to Grow & Scale

For the long-term success of your business, it’s essential to have both satisfied employees and customers.
If either of them isn’t provided with enough support, they won’t remain loyal to your company and if you keep losing customers, it will only make it harder for you to grow.
However, having a fully optimised help desk can ensure all the requirements of your customers are being met, enabling you to grow your business.

3. Increases Employee Satisfaction

Although it’s essential for you to focus on the issues of external customers, offering better support and assistance to your employees (your internal customers) can be equally rewarding.
In fact, exceptional employee experience is what helps you drive employee satisfaction.
To learn more about how you can optimise your help desk experience, click here!

Service Desk – All You Need to Know

What is an IT Service Desk?

When compared to help desks, an IT service desk focuses on broader business operations and functions as a single point of contact between your organisation and employees. It also looks at your overall business requirements rather than simply working on problem resolution.
Moreover, with a well-optimised IT service desk, you not only get to manage service requests in an efficient manner but also improve your IT operations and overall business efficiency.
If you’re looking for professional assistance for your in-house service desk, then get in touch with the experienced IT service providers at Redpalm.

The Core Functions of an IT Service Desk

Some of the critical functions of your service desk include:

  • Acting as the SPOC for every IT area including applications and business processes.
  • Tracking SLA (service level agreement) compliance.
  • Maintaining an integrated service catalogue.
  • Fully integrating with other IT service management processes.
  • Integrating asset management protocols.
  • Allocating time towards strategically innovating the business processes.

At Redplam, our 24/7 service desk professionals can help you gain a real-time visibility of all the technical issues as they develop while also generating in-depth IT reports.
With both our networking monitoring tools and service desk support, we also ensure that your business receives the right IT support to keep it going.

Top 3 Benefits of Having an IT Service Desk

1. Aligns Your Business and IT Processes

One of the biggest benefits of having an IT service desk is that it helps facilitate collaboration and communication between your employees and IT departments.
What’s more, it also helps resolve and steer clear of avoidable system breakdowns and glitches by creating, assigning, tracking and resolving tickets in a proactive manner.

2. Improves Asset Management

Since your service desk serves as the centre for all your business’ software and hardware assets, it enables easy retrieval of company data. To top it off, it also helps with asset valuation, maintenance and configuration.
With a service desk in place, you can offer 24/7 assistance to your employees while also sending them automated reminders about system updates.

3. Increases Operational Efficiency

IT service desks can help you standardise your IT processes as per the ITSM best practices. It also enables you to plan and track your IT related strategies, helping you improve your overall operational efficiency.
For more information on how service desks can benefit your organisation, give us a ring today!

Help Desk vs Service Desk – The Major Difference

When we compare a help desk vs service desk, the major difference is that the former offers faster solutions to IT issues whereas the latter focuses on offering all-encompassing services to the end-users. Another considerable difference is that your service desk offers IT solutions throughout the organisation.
Having said that, the desired differences between these services vary from one business to another based on their IT needs.
It is therefore essential for organisations to understand their IT support needs and accordingly implement a system that works for both organisational optimisation and problem resolution.

Contact Redpalm for IT Service Desk Support

If you’re looking for professional assistance to resolve your help desk vs service desk dilemma, contact the team at Redplam today!
Our professional and experienced IT support providers will not only provide you with an optimal solution but also ensure that your employees and customers receive the right support at the right time.
Alternatively, you could also drop us a line at info@redpalm.co.uk

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