Help Desk vs. Service Desk: What's the Difference?

Is your IT support a reactive firefighter rushing to extinguish IT fires as and when they occur?

Or is it a proactive architect who builds a strong foundation for your IT infrastructure and efficient service delivery from the beginning?

Yes, we are talking about the help desk and service desk.

While these terms are often used interchangeably, they greatly determine a business's efficiency. While help desks focus on quickly fixing the problem at hand, service desks unlock the potential of your IT support system.

This article will examine the long debate on help desk vs service desk. We will provide details about their differences and importance so you can make an informed decision.

What is a Help Desk?

In IT support, the help desk is your first line of defense. It is a centralized point of contact for your organization that provides technical assistance and support to users and customers who encounter any IT problem.

The help desk assists users with hardware, software, and other technical devices. It provides frontline IT support, handles basic queries from users, troubleshoots, and resolves issues to ensure minimal disruption.

The help desk quickly diagnoses the problems and offers solutions to get the user up and running again. They help you with the following:

• Software glitches, password resets, printer jams, etc.
• Answering user questions, guiding them through technical issues, and offering step-by-step solutions to their issues.
• Logging issue tickets and managing and tracking them.

Help desks focus on:

• Resolving issues as they occur and not preventing issues from occurring. 
• Creating tickets to track and manage requests from users. 
• Getting employees to troubleshoot common technical issues.
• Quickly closing tickets by finding solutions fast.

What is a Service Desk?

The service desk aligns IT processes with business objectives. It takes a more proactive approach to resolving IT issues.

It serves as a single point of contact for the company, employees, customers, and partners. It centralizes all IT-related issues, service requests, incident reporting, and communication to streamline service delivery and optimize IT operations.

While the help desk is more like an emergency service for IT issues, the service desk takes a holistic approach and acts as a strategic tool for IT operations management.

It goes beyond help desk services to provide a broader range of assistance, including:

• Knowledge management
• Incident management 
• Problem management 
• Change Management 
• Service request and catalog
• SLA management.

Service desks monitor IT systems proactively to detect potential issues, find trends and patterns, and implement preventive measures to minimize incidents and downtime.

• Involves a wide range of IT services, such as incident management, change management, problem management, and service request fulfillment
• Maintains a service catalog of all the IT services to enable users to access services quickly 
• Handles incidents, log them into the central system, and categorizes them based on impact and severity to offer resolution as soon as possible
• Tracks vital metrics to access IT service effectiveness and identify areas for improvement
• It helps build a knowledge base of queries, solutions, and resources to help users solve everyday problems.

Difference Between Help Desk and Service Desk

Help desks and services desks differ in functionalities and scope. Let’s examine these differences:

• The service desk is the evolution of the help desk, which was born out of the ITSM best practice framework, ITIL. A service desk focuses on providing services to end-users by fixing things, making new service requests, and providing information, while the help desk focuses only on fixing things.

• The help desk troubleshoots technical issues as and when they occur. The service desk proactively monitors, manages, and fulfills service requests and offers help desk functions.

• The service desk is more holistic and focuses on incidents and underlying issues. It also ensures the IT services align with ITIL and business objectives.

• The help desk typically operates at the surface level for service delivery. Metrics like MTTR and first-call resolution are used to measure its efficacy. The service desk delivers services per SLAs and ensures consistent service quality.

• The help desk interacts with users who report technical issues. The service desk interacts with users reporting issues and internal stakeholders from different departments to resolve IT requests and queries.

• The service desk operates on multi-channel communication modes to foster collaboration and offer a unified view. The help desk uses chats, phone calls, and emails to help users with basic queries.

• The service desk is a strategic approach, whereas the help desk is a quick fix for issues.

Help Desk vs Service Desk

Here’s a tabular representation of the main differences between help desks and service desks:

The Importance of Service Desk and Help Desk Tools

Studies show that tools improve operational efficiency by 131%. Service and help desk tools are essential for managing IT services and support functions.

They are essential for the following reasons:

Helps streamline the support processes: Service desk and help desk tools streamline IT support processes like ticketing and incident tracking. 

• They also automate ticket routing, promote self-service, and automatically resolve common queries.
• They help create a centralized hub for promptly addressing all IT support requests.

Robust tracking and reporting: Modern tools powered by GenAI offer robust capabilities. 

• They monitor and track metrics, conduct analyses, find patterns and identify areas of improvement in service delivery.
• They generate reports offering insights into ticket volume, response time, resolution rate, first call resolution rate, etc. 
• They track KPIs, gather user feedback, and enable you to make data-driven decisions.

Integration capabilities: Both the help desk and the service desk need data from other systems to function optimally. These tools offer seamless integration with existing tools like MS Teams and create a central system for service requests and management.

Automation features: Modern service desk and help desk tools have automation capabilities, such as routine tasks, ticket routing, process orchestration, and desktop automation.

Improve user experience: These tools help create a positive user/customer experience by promptly resolving their issues. They offer multi-channel communication for customers to access support services, improving customer’s overall experience with the organization.

Security and compliance: These tools ensure compliance with industry regulations and security measures to mitigate risks and penalties by automatically updating policies and regulations.

Where Do Help Desks & Service Desks Fit in Your Organization?

A help desk is well-suited for smaller organizations with straightforward needs. A service desk is required when the organization grows and the IT environment becomes complex. It is also crucial to note that organizations that must align IT services with their business objectives prioritize a service desk.

This is major because, besides putting out immediate fires, a service desk proactively prevents incidents, maintains and safeguards the IT infrastructure, and caters to the organization's diverse needs.

How Rezolve.ai is the Best Service Desk That can Ultimately Transform all Your IT Support

Rezolve.ai is an AITSM that elevates your IT support services by acting like a GenAI sidekick that seamlessly blends into your ticketing and employee support operations. It empowers employees with instant and personalized support.

It offers the following benefits:

• Seamless integration with MS Teams and works within its familiar interface 
• GenAI-powered service desk with automation capabilities 
• Agile knowledge management 
• Process orchestration for automating repetitive tasks
• Desktop automation, one of the few tools that offers this feature
• Conversational ticketing chatbot and live chat option
• Multi-channel support 
• Incident management and audibility to track tickets to their origin
• Problem, change, and SLA management  
• No-code automation studio for creating automated workflows
• Real-time performance dashboard and reporting

Built with scalable capabilities, Rezolve.ai auto-solves 65% of employee queries using a knowledge base and process orchestration. It also sends real-time notifications and streamlines IT processes, increasing staff productivity and efficiency.

Book a demo today to learn more about how Rezolve.ai brings a proactive approach to your service desk!

FAQs

1. What is the difference between a help center and a help desk?

The help center is a repository of resources and documentation that enables self-service among users to find answers to common queries. A help desk is a service-based support in which IT professionals help users with technical issues.

2. Is a help desk the same as customer service?

Both the help desk and customer service deal with customers or users. However, the help desk deals with technical issues users face, and customer services deals with any kind of issue customers face, including technical assistance.

3. What are the two types of service desks?

The two types of service desks are local and centralized. A local service desk is located near the organization and helps address issues location-wise. A centralized service desk manages the entire support service requirement of the organization from a central hub, irrespective of location.

4. What is an example of a help desk?

A help desk example includes an IT professional who helps with computer technical issues, such as software crashes or installation, printer jamming, and network connectivity issues.