Companies often use the
terms "call center", "Service
Desk Help Desk" interchangeably,
which can be confusing. ITIL treats call centers and helpdesks as limited types
of services, offering only part of what a helpdesk offers. With ITIL taking a
service-focused perspective and focusing on IT, it makes sense. For many
companies, the ITIL definition does not correspond to operational practices,
which makes the distinction much more complicated. Here are explanations of the
helpdesk and contact center features to help you contrast with an IT service
center.
Help Desk
A help desk is a
resource intended to provide the customer or internal user with information and
assistance relating to a company's processes, products, and services. The
purpose of a help desk is to provide a centralized resource for answering
questions, solving problems and facilitating solutions to known problems.
Common examples of Small
Business Help Desk services include:
technical support centers, product/warranty support functions, charity
offices and facility service centers. Helpdesk support can be provided through
a variety of channels, including physical locations, toll-free numbers,
websites, instant messaging and email.
Call center
A call center or contact
center is a central point for managing contacts and customer interactions.
office responsible for handling a large number of requests, usually over the
phone (but may also include letters, faxes, social media, instant messages or
email). Incoming call centers are often used for activities such as product
support, customer service, order processing, and 24/7 telephone service.
Outgoing call centers are used for activities such as telemarketing, debt
collection, and market research. A company can have multiple call centers that
support different parts of business operations (including IT) and can be
managed internally or through a third-party agency.
As you can see, there
are many overlaps between the definitions of helpdesks, call centers and IT
departments. The distinction between them really focuses on the scope of what
the function covers and how they are structured:
A helpdesk focuses on
providing "help" and "fix" assistance. Helpdesks do not
necessarily have to focus on IT and can be used to manage exceptions to normal
operations that take place within the company. These can be physical locations
that interact directly with in-person applicants or remote/virtual locations
that use technologies such as telephone, email, chat and other technologies to
facilitate virtual engagement.
Call centers are the
largest in the area of issues addressed, including technical and
non-technical topics. Call centers do not interact personally with applicants
and always involve a sort of intermediate technology to facilitate involvement.
IT support centers focus
only on the care of IT services, but manage both responsive "help"
services and routine tasks such as resource provisioning, access management,
etc. IT service desks can be physical locations that users can visit in
person or remote operations such as a call center. Those familiar with ITIL can
say that the help desk is tactical while the help desk is strategic: this can
vary from one organization to another.
What does IT help
desk do?
The main role of an IT the service center is to act as the main contact point for monitoring / owning
incidents, answering user requests/questions and providing communication the channel between other service management functions and the service community.
users. In addition to these essential functions, the service center often plays
an active role in acquiring change requests, managing third party support
contracts, managing software licenses, and managing problems.
In some organizations,
the service desk is integrated with other business processes such as:
- Employee integration
- Integration of the acquisition
- Management of data access
- Integration and disconnection
of suppliers/partners
- Management of reports and
metrics
- Business continuity management
- Infrastructure / services
monitoring
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