Benefits of IT Service Desks

What are the benefits of IT service desks? An IT service desk facilitates a single point of contact (SPOC) between end users and IT enterprises. Service desks are a key component of IT service management (ITSM) and oversee every stage of the delivery of IT services, from monitoring service requests to resolving service problems and organizing service updates.

The standard help desk is a subset of an IT service desk, according to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). While a service desk is more broadly focused on providing services to users, an IT help desk's primary focus is on resolving issues. As a result, the former is for IT assistance which is more tactical, whilst the latter is more strategic. For instance, the service desk can manage ITSM-related third-party contracts, service providers, and software licensing.

What Makes Service Desks Crucial?

The service desk is the "face" of IT operations for employees, clients, vendors, and business partners. It offers a centralized location to turn to for assistance with both IT emergencies and service requests like database access or password resets.

IT service desks are an essential component of ITSM, the best-practices model for "management of IT as a service." Service desks frequently handle multiple ITSM tasks, including the management of service requests, incidents, knowledge, self-service portals, the reporting of performance, and the monitoring of SLA. Some service desk tools can handle upgrades and issues as well.

Benefits of IT Service Desks

IT service desks is playing a significant role in the growth of remote work and digital transformation. Real-time collaborations and dependable technologies are becoming of more importance to remote workers. Self-service adoption by enterprises has increased customer satisfaction and improved the competence of their service desks, resulting in an average self-service resolution rate of 20%.

Among the main advantages of service desks, are:

Operating Effectiveness

Service desks standardize IT procedures and automate routine work to the fullest extent possible to allow faster issue response and more cost-effective operations. Implementing a virtual agent and AI chatbot at a service desk may reduce response times from 10 minutes to a few seconds.

Increased Business and IT Alignment

The interface between users, business processes, and the IT services that support them is the service desk. It offers insightful information about user satisfaction, enabling proactive problem solving and better future IT service planning.

Productivity Growth

IT service delivery is streamlined via self-service technologies, shared knowledge bases, and automated workflows. Users can return to work more quickly as a result, and IT staff is freed up to concentrate on more strategic tasks. Software for service desks can reduce client ticket volumes by up to 80%.

Better IT Asset Management

Service desks serve as a central location for all contracts, software, and hardware assets, making it simple to access information for asset appraisal, configuration, upkeep, and other tasks.

Higher Dependability

Service desks keep the business running at a lower cost by accelerating incident resolution, decreasing occurrences and difficulties, and even automatically preventing or fixing issues. By implementing conversational AI, one of the largest insurance companies has reduced expensive pre-service calls.

The Essential Functions of Service Desks

Organizations take advantage of the key capabilities of service desks to:

●Keep an eye out for IT incidents, often known as unplanned service interruptions or outages, and deal with them quickly to minimize user and business impact.
●Assist in problem-solving and troubleshooting for known issues.
●Manage changes to reduce risks to crucial operations such as disruptions to IT services, compliance problems, and other concerns.
●Respond to service requests from both corporate divisions and individual users.
●Offer "self-service" tools and service catalogs to assist consumers in solving problems swiftly and independently.
●Increase departmental knowledge, then disseminate it via searchable knowledge bases to others.
●Utilize precise metrics and thorough reporting to monitor the efficiency of the IT staff and service desk resources.
●Handle, assign, and prioritize support requests to ensure quicker resolution, modern service desk software incorporates AI-powered automation.

Service desks are so advanced to handle business requirements such as those in HR, law, finance and accounting that are not typically associated with IT. Some service desks may handle data access management, supplier/partner contracts, employee onboarding, etc.

What is Ahead for IT Help Desks?

IT service desks must continuously modify their procedures to satisfy consumers' expectations since new technologies are developed almost daily. However, maintaining employees' productivity and happiness is not an easy task. According to a Forrester report, just 17% of worldwide IT employees believe acquiring authorization to access the data they want is a simple procedure.

IT service desks are responding by modifying new service provisions to enhance digital experiences. Contacting the service desk is now simpler thanks to new communication methods like chat and chatbots. Users can request apps, services, and endpoint devices, thanks to other technologies like a service app store.

Another advancement in the service scope is enterprise service management, which includes defined processes to assist the departments of HR, facilities, finance, security, and law. Even non-IT tasks can be configured by IT teams to produce better business results.

Not only are accidents being resolved more quickly thanks to service automation, but employee and customer satisfaction is also rising. When making a straightforward request, such as gaining access to a new database, users don't have to wait long. Thanks to automated incident categorization and clever ticketing systems, requests that need more in-depth IT knowledge can also be handled more quickly.

Use Cases for the IT Help Desk

Any business that employs technology in some manner will require and use an IT service desk, albeit the specific requirements of each firm may vary based on what their technology is designed to do. Following are a few typical use cases:

Reducing the cost of technology

By allocating IT budgets to the precise areas where they are most required, the service desk can assist enterprises in reducing their expenditures on technology.

Prompt response to downtime

A solid service desk system gathers historical data on the organization's technology and procedures, allowing for the early detection, prevention, and resolution of possible hiccups and malfunctions, greatly minimizing downtime.

Management of change across enterprises

To ensure that IT users are aware of what to do and when, service desks can be used to schedule change procedures, assign transitional duties, and automate notification delivery.

Fundamental reaction to occurrences

Service desks not only offer a route for more effective incident management, but they also let customers use a knowledge base for self-service, which speeds up resolution.