3.8 What Types of Requests Can the Staff Handle?

In the discussions with the business, you covered what type of request that they would make at a high level. Possible candidates were Service Request, Incident and Change. There are more processes that the service desk can perform such as Problem Management where historical incident data is analysed to determine any underlying cause. For now, we are focusing on customer facing ones.

Here are the definitions again:

  • Service Request: A request from a customer for information, advice, standard change or for access to an IT Service.

  • Incident: n unplanned interruption to an IT Service or a reduction in the Quality of an IT Service.

  • Change: The addition, modification or removal of anything that could have an effect on IT Services.

A good starting point as to what requests to handle is Incident, followed by Change and then Service Requests.

At this point in time we are designing how these requests will function, merely if we should be doing them or not. To this end, here are the typical activities involved in each to help you arrive at that decision.

Service Request:

  • To provide a channel for users to request and receive standard services for which a pre-defined approval and qualification process exists

  • To provide information to users and customers about the availability of services and the procedure for obtaining them

  • To source and deliver the components of requested standard services (e.g. licences and software media)

  • To assist with general information, complaints or comments

Incident:

  • Incident detection and recording

  • Initial user support by the single point of contact(service desk)

  • Investigation and diagnosis

  • Resolution and recovery of service

  • Incident closure

  • Incident ownership, monitoring, and communication

Change:

  • Record requests for change

  • Change logging

  • Review the request for change

  • Assess and evaluate the change

  • Evaluation of change

  • Allocation of priorities

  • Change planning and scheduling

  • Authorizing the change

  • Coordinating change implementation

  • Review and close change record