What is the Difference Between an IT Service Desk and a Help Desk or Call Center?

Businesses often use the terms "call center," "helpdesk," and "customer service" interchangeably, which can be confusing. ITIL considers call centers and support services as limited types of services, offering only part of what a support service offers. With ITIL taking a service-centric perspective and focusing on IT, it makes sense. For many companies, the definition of ITIL 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 create a contrast to an IT service center.

Help desk

A help desk is a resource intended to provide the client or the internal user with information and assistance related to the processes, products and services of a company. The purpose of a help desk is to provide a centralized resource for answering questions, help desk problems and solutions. Common examples of help desk services include: technical support centers, product / warranty support functions, benefits offices, and facility service centers. Technical 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 to manage contacts and interactions with customers. office responsible for handling a large number of requests, usually by phone (but may also include letters, faxes, social media, instant messages, or emails). Inbound call centers are often used for things like product support, customer service, order processing, and 24/7 phone service. Outgoing call centers are used for things like telemarketing, debt collection, and market research. A company may have multiple call centers that support different parts of business operations (including IT) and can be managed internally or through an external agency.

As you can see, there are many overlaps between the definitions of helpdesks, call centers and IT departments. The distinction between them really centers on the scope of what the function covers and the way they are structured:

A helpdesk is focused on providing "help" and "fix" assistance. Help desks do not need to be IT-centric and can be used to handle exceptions to normal operations that take place across the enterprise. These can be physical locations that interact directly with applicants in person or remote / virtual locations using technologies such as phone, email, chat, and other technologies to facilitate virtual interaction.

Call centers are the largest in the scope of the problems they cover, including technical and non-technical issues. Call centers do not interact with applicants in person and always involve some form of intermediate technology to facilitate participation.

IT service centers only focus on taking care of IT services, but they handle both responsive "help" services and routine tasks like resource provisioning, access management, etc. . IT service desktops can be physical locations that users can visit in person, or they can be remote operations, such as a call center. Those familiar with ITIL may say that the help desk is tactical while the help desk is strategic; This may vary from one organization to another.

What Does an IT Service Desk do?

The primary role of an IT service center is to serve as the primary point of contact for monitoring / owning incidents, responding to user requests/questions, and providing a communication channel between other service management functions and the community of services. users. In addition to these essential functions, the service the center often plays an active role in capturing change requests, managing third-party support contracts, managing software licenses, and help with problem management.

In some organizations, the service desk is integrated with other business processes, such as:

• Employee integration
• Integration acquisition
• Data access management
• Integration and disconnection of suppliers/partners.
• Reports and metric management
• Business continuity management
• Infrastructure/service monitoring

Benefits of an IT Service Desk

Savings and scalability

Cost savings and scalability are the two most common benefits companies look for when implementing an IT support service. A well-staffed, well-staffed service center can handle much of your routine IT work. The service center offers organizations a relatively inexpensive option to transfer the simple work of expensive engineering teams and subject matter experts, allowing them to focus on activities that add more value to the business. The service center can also provide the company with a means to provide ongoing support to global operations and distributed user communities.

A finger on the pulse of user sentiment

The service center is the starting point for many key IT processes and services, and as such is often the primary interface between users, business processes, and the IT departments that activate them. Monitoring this interaction provides valuable insight into user satisfaction, service sentiment, and unmet features and needs that IT departments may address in the future.

Early warning of possible problems.

Due to the volume of problems and requests handled by the service center, with the appropriate data and tools to assess patterns and trends, the organization can use the service center as a monitoring tool to identify and resolve preventive service problems. " early warning system "provided by the service center can enable proactive problem management, preventive maintenance, and service modifications to reduce the impact of interruptions and service degradation on users.

IT Service Desk Best Practices

Businesses have operated IT service centers for many years and some of the best practices have emerged from these operations.

Customer commitment

• Examine the customer's behavior and expectations to make sure they understand your needs.
• Provide a 24-hour self-help portal for the end-user (even when their service center is closed)
• Use SLAs and priority / severity rankings to differentiate requests so you can answer the most critical questions first
• Try to resolve issues at the first, point of engagement and avoid transfers, escalations and the need for reminders
• Conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys to understand what your customers think about the services they receive

Service Desk Management and Reports

• Use real-time support reports, dashboards and analytics to monitor operations and initiate corrective action before problems become problems.
• Make sure the escalation and transfer processes are clear and well understood to avoid lost SLAs
• Take advantage of the analytical capabilities of your ITSM system to reduce the time and effort required to generate reports
• Make sure management is experienced in your service center operations to better understand what service center staff are doing and the challenges they face
• Treat service center staff as professional communicators and problem solvers, giving them the tools they need to succeed

Use of technology to support the computer support service

• Implement service request workflow capabilities in your support software to help orchestrate escalations and transfers
• Provide automation capabilities for common user requests (login, password reset, etc.)
• Use your service center software to facilitate and record communications between agents and requesters.
• Integrate your Service Desk systems into your larger ITSM to provide agents better access to information about the IT environment

Knowledge management

• Implement a knowledge management system to capture knowledge in a location accessible to multiple people.
• Provide answers to frequently asked questions directly to end-users, eliminating the need to contact an agent
• Keep your knowledge records up-to-date and accurate by reviewing and purging knowledge records frequently

How to run Help desk

How do you build a service center that can meet the needs of a scalable organization? At Atlassian, we have faced this question ourselves. In 2010, we had 230 employees. That number has exploded: there are many thousands of us these days. With rapid growth, we seek every opportunity to become more efficient, and managing an efficient service center is a big part of it.

What is the service table?

First: let's be clear about what service offices do. The ITIL 4 glossary defines a service center as "the single point of contact between the service provider and users". A typical service center handles service requests and incidents.

The service center is the center where customers (for example, employees or other interested parties) can find help from their IT service providers. Regardless of the type of assistance provided, the goal of a service, the desk is to provide high-quality service to customers in a timely manner.

HELP TABLE VS SERVICE TABLE

There are often questions about the differences between helpdesk and support services. To some extent, these can be semantic differences. With that said, the help desk is generally considered more tactical and designed to quickly resolve immediate problems. Serviced offices are considered more strategic and are designed to meet broader business needs. They often support multiple ITSM practices.

how to run a help desk

Service Desk Best Practices

Your service center is the first line of support, a representation of your IT team and essential for team activation. It is at the heart of productive organizations. Adopting Service Desk best practices can help manage costs and deliver great service experiences. Between installing new offices, integrating new employees, and expanding at high speed, we learned a few things that helped along the way. Here are our tips:

1. Use your service center software to its fullest potential

A long time ago at Atlassian, we didn't use a specially designed service center, so with the creation of this global support team, we decided to move from tracking issues in Jira Software to using Jira Service Desktop for self-service, SLA monitoring, and collaboration.

We had to adapt to manage a high volume of tickets while contributing and maintaining our support knowledge base. We've also embraced knowledge-centric support as a way to reduce ticket volume and improve resolution times.

2. Stop treating your IT teams as "generals"

Ticket variety can often be more challenging than the volume of incoming tickets. Like many of our clients, our infrastructure is quite complex. It's safe to say that we have miles of cables and tons of metal and thousands of virtual machines running our local offices, data centers, and application services. Before launching a dedicated Level 1 support team, our IT specialists rushed between user account management, desktop and hardware support, office and network infrastructure, application and system change requests, project work, and maintenance.

Our first big lesson was to stop spreading so much variety and volume within the same team. Instead, we divide ourselves into three more specialized teams:

• Office engineering, to manage the local network and the unique technological needs in each location.

• Workplace technology, covering our workplace productivity tools such as Jira, our travel booking system, etc.

• Atlasdesk, our global service team

Life has become much simpler as teams receive much more specific work. Additionally, areas of specialization allow team members to become true experts in a particular area and ultimately resolve incidents and problems more quickly as our knowledge becomes more deeply ingrained and our attention more focused.

3. Create a customer portal

It shouldn't be difficult for clients to ask for help. We use Jira Service Desk to provide a single customer service center that connects the IT service center and many of our departmental service offices, such as legal and human resources, so that customers can go to the same place to find all services what do you need.

It is also very easy to access the portal. Employees simply type go / it helps in their browser and are instantly redirected to the right place. New employees learn this as part of the integration, so they know how to get help quickly and easily from day one.

4. Be smart with ALS

Like any good customer service team, we want our customers to get the best possible service. To measure our progress, we always set goals, but they were not always easy to follow or customize for different geographies, teams, priority levels, etc.

When we launch our global service center team, we start from day one with clear SLAs that are easy for service center analysts to understand and follow. Furthermore, they are extremely customizable, so managers can define meaningful and relevant SLAs for their teams, not just arbitrary measures.

5. Promote self-service for customers.

Studies show that 72% of customers prefer to use self-service support. For this to be true, however, it must be easy to use. The self-service portal mentioned above is one way to make it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. Knowledge bases and question-and-answer communities are also helpful.

6. Look at the big picture and measure your progress

We definitely monitor key operational metrics like most IT organizations. But we are no longer obsessed with random KPIs and are now much more focused on measuring what matters most. In summary, we prioritize customer experience and spend our time exploring trends and numbers that can help us make the biggest improvements.

We spend our time looking at the peaks and valleys in the data, then ask ourselves "why" get to the bottom of the causes of "good" experiences versus "bad" experiences for customers, and low volume volumes by comparison with high volume days for our team. We focus on preventing incidents, not just solving problems. This is important to the efficiency and happiness of our support analysts. It was also helpful to inform management, who appreciated this vision of the company.

As you can imagine, our teams are experiencing increasing difficulties as we adapt to new challenges. Yours too. The important thing is that you have the right tools to measure your effectiveness and make the best decisions to guide your team.

Why Bother With Help Desk Software?

Summary:

Advances in the information highway have made many people dependent on technology for their personal and professional activities. Nowadays, people are becoming very reliant on technology, and they even need computers to verify their daily activities.

Students, doctors, lawyers, and even businesspeople increasingly rely on computers for their schedules, activities, business plans, and almost all of their life strategies, without computers, careers.

Article Body:

Advances in the information highway have made many people dependent on technology for their personal and professional activities. Nowadays, people are becoming very reliant on technology, and they even need computers to verify their daily activities.

Students, doctors, lawyers, and even businesspeople increasingly rely on computers for their schedules, activities, business plans, and almost all of their life strategies. Without a computer, their careers, businesses, and even their lives would be in chaos.

This increasing dependence on everything technical has made people aware of the importance of establishing a system that helps they survive any professional emergency. Not everyone who uses computers is an expert, so at least they need something that gives them the basics of solving technical problems.

One of the essential products to reach the market is what is called assistive software. This software is intended to assist the purchaser of any software product that has little or no knowledge of the product they have purchased. The help desk software provides a step-by-step guide on how to use the software and what to do if you have a buyer problem.

Support service software is now part of the after-sales service for most software companies that want to keep their customers satisfied and satisfied even after purchasing their products. Most support services can be accessed through the Internet to allow all users to obtain as much product information through the most efficient method.

The help desk is fundamental, especially when the program or product used plays an essential role in the daily operations of the user's company. Businesses that are heavy users of the software and other IT products should make sure to set up help desks in the office so that any employee with a technical problem can solve the problem on their own.

Creating a helpdesk will not only maximize production but will also save the time and effort of technicians who can focus their attention to the most pressing problems of what they can do alone. Employees who have questions with their computers and other office machines can head to the help desk and consult instructions for specific emergencies or problems related to the product they are having issues with.

Support services now play an essential role in the operations of every business, be it a small or medium business or even a large corporation. All companies can take advantage of the support offered by the helpdesk and should start creating one for their staff.

10 Most Common Helpdesk Problems and Solutions

My Password is lost, need to Reset

People most often forget and forget their account password. Take for example the G-suite.

In some organizational configurations, G-suite is configured so that only an administrator can reset a user's password. In this case, people go directly to the help desk and create a ticket every time they forget their password.

One of the main features is to automate recurring tasks through automation of workflow. That is why a user does not have to manage a wave of such tickets.

A technician would create a service catalog item, specifically for a password reset, and combine it with workflow automation, which will automatically route tickets to the appropriate technicians who will perform the reset.

My Wi-Fi keeps dropping

Today, all work is done in the cloud using mobile devices; and Wi-Fi ensures that we are connected at all times.

When someone can't connect to your Wi-Fi access point, they can't work, which is a problem that ends up at the help desk.

The problem is usually related to the unique strength of the closest router or Wi-Fi interference.

A user can merge tickets linked to a single router. He / she can find the details of the CMDB router and create a problem ticket for a permanent solution.

My USB devices aren’t working

People act fast. When a USB device is not recognized, it goes directly to the help desk without proper verification.

The best thing to do is to prevent applicants from completing such tickets by telling them that there is a help article on this topic.

It has an integrated knowledge base, where technicians can write informative articles on different topics, and knowledge base articles can be viewed on the customer portal. The idea here is to allow applicants to try to solve their problems on their own; in case of failure, deposit a ticket.

Spilled Coffee on my laptop

People love their coffee at work. This gives them the boost they need to get the day going.

Sometimes coffee accidents happen and their laptops become the victim.

A technician can create what to do and what not to do after a spill, and automatically send it every time someone submits a ticket talking about a wet laptop

Can’t seem to use my department’s printer

Very often the solution to a problem is simple; people tend to ignore the obvious and complicate things.

The printer problem is one of those problems. Where the solution can be as simple as turning on the printer or putting paper in the tray.

The  administrator can create a workflow in which an automatic email is sent every time a printer problem is submitted. The email would contain common problems and their solutions to allow the applicant to resolve the problem on their own.

Faced with a blue screen of death

Normally, a blue screen during work scares a user and puts them in panic mode. Then call the helpdesk and ask a technician to deposit a ticket.

But not with  ITSM; Here, users have access to a compatible mobile application on Android and iOS, where they can search for a solution in the knowledge base and submit a ticket.

Computer continues to shutdown

A problem likely caused by a hardware failure. These problems can be quickly resolved if the technician is prepared with the replacement equipment.

It has a CMDB capable of storing information about non-IT assets. In such a failure, a technician would link the incident ticket to the appropriate hardware entry in the CMDB and initiate a change immediately after diagnosis.

Lost access to shared drive

A problem that can be solved with instructions and with minimal intervention.

The administrator can create a separate category for these tickets and an SLA. The service agreement will guarantee that little time will be spent on these tickets. Resolution can be done first via automated email and then, if not yet resolved, via remote desktop.

Computer has a virus

Such problems can be symptoms of a serious breach of security and require serious attention from computer technicians.

Here, a technician can use the agent application, with which he can do the following:

• Correct Windows Defender with the latest definition.
• Access the affected machine remotely and run an antivirus scan.

The mouse is dead

The most common problem and the most broken device in an office is the mouse.

An administrator can create a service item in the service catalog accompanied by workflows and SLAs for quick replacement.

Conclusion 

I hope you enjoyed our compilation of the top 10 most common It help desk problems and Solutions. If you have your own Top 10, share it with us in the comments section

What is link Juice?

Link Juice is the term used in the SEO world to refer to the past value or fairness of one page or site to another. This value is transmitted through hyperlinks. Search engines see links as votes from other websites that your page is valuable and worth promoting.

There are many ways to get links on the web through direct and indirect efforts. Direct effort refers to link building strategies such as document sharing, guest posting, social media marketing, posting press releases, etc. The indirect effort comes from presenting great content on your site, leading readers to share it on the Web, by linking pages naturally. The fairness of the link that passes from these sites to your site is the juiced link, and this juice link differs in its authority depending on the sites that link to it.

How Does Link Juice Works

Suppose you have sites A and B. If all other ranking factors are constant and site A has a link while site B has no links, site A will rank higher in the research results due to the juice of links you receive from the external site that links you. What happens if Site B also receives a link? It depends on the amount of juice that each link passes. Look at the diagram below. Site A receives links from four sites while B receives links from two sites. All link sites also get link juice from other sites. A receives links from more sites, more link juice is transferred to A, and therefore A is likely to rank higher than B in search results. Note: These results assume that sites linked to A and B have similar authority.

Another factor to consider is that the passage of the bonding juice occurs in both directions. Now suppose that sites that link to site A also link to other sites (represented by the gray arrows in the diagram below), while sites that link to site Blink exclusively to B. In this case, the percentage of the binding juice B receives is greater than the percentage of the binding juice site A it receives. This increases the chances that Site B is rated higher than Site A.

Today, I’m going to mention all my Link Juice list where I’ve worked on and you shouldn’t miss it.

http://dokonoko.pinoko.jp/aarus_awakening/index.php?Tier%20links%20March

http://wiki.crap.jp/ankoku_midori/index.php?tierlinks%20March

http://yascii.hiho.jp/wiki01/index.php?tierlinks%20March

http://iphone.saloon.jp/index.php?tierlinks%20March

http://tokiminori.under.jp/miyagi_anison/index.php?Tier%20links%20march

http://nakigao.sitemix.jp/nakiwiki/?tierlinks%20march

http://eba-www.yokohama-cu.ac.jp/~kook/cgi-bin/seminar/index.php?tierlinks%20march

http://k-pool.pupu.jp/wiki/index.php?tierlinks%20march

http://mc-dqm4.xii.jp/index.php?tierlinks%20march

http://fortune.daa.jp/hosigamitaiju/index.php?tier%20links%20march

https://ikeda-lab.sfc.keio.ac.jp/3DSS/index.php?tierlinks%20march

How are Data Centers Managed?

Managing a data center with maximum efficiency and reliability requires the joint efforts of facilities and IT.

IT systems: servers, storage devices, and networks must be properly managed and updated. This includes things like operating systems, security patches, applications and system resources (memory, memory, and CPU).

Facility Infrastructure: All data center support systems are subject to heavy loads and must be properly maintained to continue to function satisfactorily. These systems include cooling, humidification, air treatment, power distribution, backup power generation and much more.

Monitoring: When a device, connection or application fails, it can stop critical operations. Sometimes a system error overlaps with applications from other systems that depend on the failed drive's data or services. For example, different systems, such as inventory control, credit card processing, accounting and more, will be involved in a complex process such as online payment. Failure in one will compromise everyone else. In addition, modern applications generally have a high degree of interdependence between devices and connections. Ensuring maximum availability requires 24/7 monitoring of the applications, systems and key connections involved in a company's various workflows.

Building management system: for large data centers, the building management system (BMS) will allow constant and centralized monitoring of the installation, including temperature, humidity, power, and cooling.

The management of IT installations and data centers are often outsourced to third-party companies specialized in monitoring, maintenance and correction of systems and installations based on shared services.

What is a Green Data Center?

An ecological data center is a center capable of operating with maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. This includes mechanical, lighting, electrical and IT equipment (server, storage, network, etc.). Within companies, the focus on green data centers is primarily driven by the desire to reduce the huge electricity costs associated with running a data center. In other words, going green is recognized as a way to significantly reduce operating expenses for IT infrastructure.

Interest in green data centers are also stimulated by the federal government. In 2006, Congress passed public-law 109-431 asking the EPA to "analyze the rapid growth and energy consumption of computer data centers by the federal government and private enterprises."

In response, the EPA has developed a comprehensive report that analyzes current energy use trends and the energy costs of data centers and servers in the United States and described existing and emerging opportunities to improve energy efficiency. It also made recommendations to exploit these energy efficiency opportunities across the country through the use of information programs and incentives.

According to the EPA the report, the two largest electricity consumers in the data center are:

• Support infrastructure: 50% of the total

• General servers: 34% of the total

Since then, significant progress has been made to improve server efficiency. Blade servers and high-density storage now offer much higher processing capacity per watt of energy. Server virtualization allows organizations to reduce the total number of servers they support, and the introduction of EnergyStar servers has combined to offer many options for the public and private sector to reduce 34% of electricity spent on generic servers.

Of course, the biggest opportunity for further savings is the data center support infrastructure itself. According to the EPA, most data centers consume 100% to 300% more energy for support systems than those used for their basic IT operations. Through a combination of best practices and migration to improvements in fast damping systems (such as ultrasonic humidification and airflow control), this additional costs can be reduced to approximately 30% of the IT load.