ITIL - Service Desk

The service desk provides the primary window for customer and user contact with the service organisation on a day-to-day basis. The Service Desk may be responsible for a number of discrete functions within the support organisation, including:

Provision of a single point of contact for customers
The Service Desk provides a day-to-day contact point between customers, users, IT services and third party support organisations. At an operational level, its objective is to provide a single point of contact to provide advice, guidance and may also be involved in providing a rapid restoration of normal services to its customers and users’ following any service disruption.

Incident Classification
Incident classification is an important role of the Service Desk. The final classification(s) of an incident may vary to the initially reported one. The customer / user often reports a ‘symptom’ of the incident and not necessarily the root problem. However, the incident classification process should not be over-complicated by adding too many classifications.

Incident Control
The Service Desk should own the incident control process and monitor progress on all incidents regardless of origin.

Incident Reporting and Review
The Service Desk forms the main day-to-day interface between the Service Delivery organisation and the users. Whilst the Service Desk plays an active role as a communication channel for incident control, it also provides a contact point for enquiries on general service issues (including advice on progress on prior reported incidents / problems) and the dissemination of relevant information (e.g. via bulletins, system messages, etc.).