Companies often use the terms "call centre", "Service Desk Help Desk" interchangeably, which can be confusing. ITIL treats
call centres 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 centre features
to help you contrast with an IT service centre.
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 centres, product/warranty support functions, charity offices and
facility service centres. Helpdesk support can be provided through a variety of
channels, including physical locations, toll-free numbers, websites, instant
messaging and email.
Call centre
A call centre or contact centre 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 centres are often used for
activities such as product support, customer service, order processing, and
24/7 telephone service. Outgoing call centres 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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