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In a previous blog, we were looking at general IT operational issues. In this blog, we will look at some of the issues that specifically touch the service desk.

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Let us start by understanding what a service desk is and what is its primary function.

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In the world of information technology, whenever customers, and these are the internal customers, have issues with their laptop, desktop, printer, email, any application they use, the Internet, or, for that matter, any IT issue they have, they will contact the service desk via phone, chat, email, web ticket, or self-service, depending on the nature of their problem. As soon as the service desk receives a call, they normally begin working on the problem in order to address it on the first attempt. Defined as fixing it immediately rather than sending the issue to a higher level support team for further investigation and resolution

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A service desk is typically a single point of contact for IT support. Most customers will not interact with or have any idea what is happening behind the scenes. How many teams are there? What do Those teams do? Who is on those teams? All the customer will know is that they contacted the service desk regarding a problem and the service desk owns the resolution of the problem.

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So what happens if you do not have any intelligent automation in your organization? You will have more calls to the service desk. This will result in you having to hire more people, resulting in increased costs.

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  • What happens if your self-service portal is not user-friendly, not content-rich, or intuitive? You will have more calls to the service desk.
  • What happens if there are quality issues with your service desk toll-free number?
  • What happens if there are too many menu options that a client has to go through to get support?
  • What happens if the service desk is not staffed to handle the calls that are coming to it?
  • What happens if your service desk is receiving hundreds or thousands of calls and they’re not able to connect the dots and realize that those calls are tied to a single issue. A global outage.
  • What happens if you do not have proper staffing coverage? What happens if the service desk agents don’t have the skills and capabilities because they have not been trained properly? What Happens if their tools are not working?

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Although not a comprehensive list, the list of issues once again highlights the common global issues that every service desk faces.

Why is this important?

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If you understand the types of issues that IT operations can face.

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if you understand the types of issues a service desk will face, and if you can understand the types of issues a hot dog stand can face, you will be in a much better position to respond to and resolve those issues promptly.

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This is where domain experience becomes essential. Knowing the business and the types of challenges the business is facing or can face, will enable you to help that business.

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