Service Desk vs Help Desk: What’s the Difference?

What Is a Service Desk?

The communication center offers a single point of contact between a company and its employees, customers, and business partners. The IT service desk helps through the complete product lifecycle, ensuring each user receives help as and when needed.

Key Functions of a Service Desk

Some of the key functions and responsibilities of a service desk include the following:

• The service desk monitors IT incidents, such as service interruptions and unplanned outages and resolves them with the least impact on the business and users.
• The service desk troubleshoots problems and finds solutions to familiar problems.
• They are responsible for managing any changes to reduce IT service compliance issues, service disruptions, and other risks to major operations.
• Organizations depend on the IT service desk to address service requests from both business units and individual users. They might range from partner requests for portal access to employee requests for new devices to departmental requests for new software licenses.
• They provide self-service tools and service catalogs to assist users in resolving issues independently and quickly.
• The service desk even broadens departmental knowledge and shares that specific information through searchable knowledge bases with others.
• They track the results and functioning of the service desk, tools and IT team through detailed reporting and specific metrics.

Advantages of Using a Service Desk

IT service desks play a major role in the rise of digital transformation and remote work. Remote employees are highly dependent on real-time collaboration and reliable technology. Organizations that have implemented self-service have enhanced satisfaction and increased the capacity of their service desk, achieving maximum self-service resolution. Some of the major benefits of service desks are as follows:

Better productivity: Automated workflows, self-service tools, and shared knowledge bases streamline the functioning of IT services. This assists users in moving back to work faster and leaves ample time for the IT staff to focus on other strategic activities.

Operational efficiency: The service desk automates routine tasks and standardized IT processes to a great extent, enabling more cost-efficient operations and faster incident response. Deploying an AI chatbot and a virtual agent within a service desk reduces response times to only a few seconds from 10 minutes.

Greater reliability: By fastening incident resolution, minimizing problems and incidents and automating problem prevention and resolution, the service desk runs the business smoothly at a lesser cost.

What Is a Help Desk? 

The IT helpdesk is a software and the starting point of communication for employees and customers whenever a problem occurs. Its major purpose is to resolve employee or customer issues rapidly without any delay. A help desk in IT support is used to offer help to customers who need technical help. An organization must integrate a help desk to empower quick and effective responses to the problems of employees and customers to provide the best services to those in need.

Key Functions of a Help Desk

A help desk is responsible for performing the following functions:

• The help desk answers customers' questions whenever they require assistance or step-by-step instructions.
• A help desk is a single point of contact, allowing both internal and external customers to contact it when needed.
• They centralize knowledge, offer workflow guidance to those in need, and provide quick problem-solving solutions.

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Advantages of Using a Help Desk

The IT help desk offers numerous benefits. They are as follows :

Efficient Operations

IT help desk provides better experiences to the employees, allowing them to receive assistance whenever and wherever they require it. It helps employees solve their problems quickly on their own or with the help of a technical person. This smooth flow of problem-solving promotes efficient operations.

Boost your ROI

Technical difficulties can hinder your operations and even affect your profits. Technology is integrated to speed up the business and not create issues. The IT help desk helps your organization run smoothly and maintains the flow of your profits.

Pinpoint Weaknesses For Improvement

The help desk helps power leaders with gaps and trends in IT service delivery, such as resolutions and ticket response times, helping them make informed and smarter decisions for the workforce and teams. If the same problems occur repeatedly, it disturbs growth; hence, identifying the problem areas and improving operations can provide continuous expansion of your business.

Service Desk vs. Help Desk: Key Differences

The major differences between the help desk vs. service desk are as follows:

Emerging Trends in IT Support

Some of the emerging trends in IT support are discussed below:

Automation

Automation stands as the best way to perform repetitive tasks accurately and in less time. In the future, the use of AI-powered chatbots for customer service support is likely to be adopted. They can offer customers enough feedback and unlimited information. Automating several other tasks will help reduce human errors to a large extent and save ample time for people to invest in other major tasks.

Cloud Computing 

Cloud computing is an important process for remote working methods which has been adopted by several companies. The major benefit of a cloud is that it stores and retrieves information in a single location. Cloud computing systems are becoming highly secure and powerful. Several cloud solutions come with enhanced security features, protecting your data and keeping hackers away.

Better Remote IT Support

As several organizations have started working remotely, the need for remote IT support has increased. Many organizations have started remote IT assistance, but at times, due to certain glitches in the system, the communication is disrupted, leading to failed efficiency, low productivity and late responses. Hence, there is an urgent need to improve remote IT support to reduce inefficiencies and promote smooth operations.

Conclusion

Each industry will keep implementing leading technologies over time. With the constantly shifting trends, keeping up with the industry developments can be challenging. Thankfully, with IT support services, you can get assistance bridging these gaps and staying on the top of your game.

If you’re an IT professional and are willing to offer the right assistance through the help desk or service desk, acquiring the IT service skills to drive value is essential. With Simplilearn’s ITIL certification course, prepare for the exam and boost IT teamwork.

FAQs

1. Is a service desk an IT job?

An IT service desk is a communication center providing a SPOC between the company and its customers, business partners and employees.

2. Can a single organization have both a Service Desk and a Help Desk? 

Yes, a company can have both a Help desk and a service desk.

3. Is the help desk and service desk the same?

No, the help desk and service desk are not the same.

4. How do I choose between implementing a Service Desk or a Help Desk? What are the costs associated with Service Desks and Help Desks? 

The help desk handles technical issues, such as fixing software and hardware issues, to restore systems efficiently. The service desk offers a service-oriented approach and manages all the user needs beyond technology. You must select the one that aligns with your needs. 

The cost of a service desk might include software licensing fees, legal and consulting fees, job training and property taxes. On the other hand, the help desk can cost an average of $3,200 to $7,200 or more per month.

5. How can I improve the efficiency of my current IT support system?

You can improve the efficiency of your IT support system by considering the points mentioned below:

• Acknowledge the expectations of the users from the service desk
• Use the right tools to improve the IT service desk
• Prioritize requests and issues based on their urgency

6. Is a service desk a stressful job?

Some major issues that make the service desk a stressful job include an unrealistic time frame, insufficient budget, and not enough staff.