1.1 The Service Desk

The Service Desk provides the essential daily contact between customers, users, IT service and any relevant third-party support organization. The main objective of the service desk is to drive and improve service support to, and on behalf of an organization.

This customer-facing support service is a single point of contact that provides advice, guidance and rapid restoration of normal services to its customers and users. It handles Incidents, Problems and Change requests. More than this, it also manages maintenance contracts, software licenses, and provides Service Level Management, Configuration Management.

The successful implementation of a service desk results in a professional service that builds business confidence and provides greater customer satisfaction. This is a result of the professional service that is positioned to provide a consolidated and fiscally positive business activity that impacts all aspects of service beyond the IT department. The key to service desk success is the employment of professional people, well-defined and repeatable processes and good tools, which in turn makes the product or service being supported, to some degree, immaterial.

Adopting a service management approach results in benefits across all level of any business: