Many technical professionals struggle with properly understanding the role of the service desk when they are first introduced to ITIL. The misconception arises when they initially equate the service desk function to the technical support desks they frequently contact at software and hardware manufacturers. Though the standard tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 (and perhaps beyond) conventions are used to describe the stages of technical support and there are other similarities, the roles of the service desk and technical support are quite different.

The Service Desk is the customer facing single point of contact for users that rely on the services provided by information technology. As the advocate for the end user, the mission of the Service Desk is to restore service as quickly as possible; not to investigate the root cause and to work on a permanent fix, which is the responsibility of Problem Management. The technical support desk is an organization within a product manufacturer that helps engineers and technicians identify the causes of failures and suggests solutions based upon expert knowledge of a product, whether hardware, software or a combination of both.

To clarify the distinction, consider an Incident where a single end user calls the Service Desk to report that they are not able to send or receive email. After some conversation, the Service Desk representative determines that there is a network connectivity problem at the end user’s location, and they instruct the user to restart the wireless Internet router appliance. Assume for a moment that this resolves the problem; the Service Desk can then close the incident. If this is a common occurrence, the Service Desk should publish the symptoms and resolution in a frequently asked questions or similar public forum.

Now consider a scenario where there is an unplanned outage of email services due to component failures in the data center. The Service Desk receives numerous phone calls from users unable to send and receive email. An Incident is opened for each of the phone calls, and the Service Owner for email engages Technical Operations to restore service. An engineer discovers that the email server has frozen, and reboots the server in accordance with established emergency procedures, which immediately restores service. The Service Desk can then contact the users, verify that their service has been restored, and close the Incidents. Though the root cause of the failure may not have been established and a permanent solution may not be in place, the Service Desk has fulfilled their responsibility to restore service.

Though service has been restored, the Service Owner wants to assure that this type of failure is avoided. Working with Problem Management, a Problem record is established and, assuming that a software tool is in place that has Incident and Problem Management systems, the Incidents are linked to the Problem record. Technical Operations contacts the technical support desk at their hardware or software vendor, or both, and works with them to establish the root cause and propose a permanent solution. Depending upon the specifics of the permanent solution that is agreed upon, the business’s Change Management processes would be invoked to implement the solution, leading to the problem record being closed.

There are three important distinctions between the Service Desk and the technical support desks that software and hardware vendors provide:

1) The service desk supports services; a technical support desk supports products.
2) The service desk’s customer is the end user; technical support’s customer is typically an engineer or technician.
3) The service desk focuses on restoring services as quickly as possible; technical support works to discover root causes of failures and recommend permanent solutions.

It is important to understand that though the ITIL framework is flexible enough that it may provide guidance to product manufacturers, this is not ITIL’s intent. The genesis of ITIL is as a source of best practices for the operation of information technology departments. The mindset of ITIL is that IT must provide measurable value to the business in the form of services that offer both utility and warranty; thus the technology, products and manufacturer support organizations that are used to accomplish services must remain invisible to the end user.

Tweet