Help Desk vs Service Desk: What’s the Difference?

A few years ago, the ITIL^® purist in me would have argued that help desks and service desks are two completely different beasts. Now, I am inclined to say that the distinction is probably more semantics than anything else. Still, many out there say that a help desk and a service desk are not the same, so in this article I will explore the differences and similarities between help desks and service desks. In the end, it is up to you and your organization to decide what to call the function that provides the gateway to your IT services—there is no right or wrong here.

Let’s start with the most widely used definitions of help desks and service desks, along with some examples and tips on how to choose what’s right for your company.

What is a help desk?

The IT help desk is typically seen as more tactical, with the primary goal of helping to quickly resolve end users’ immediate needs and technical issues and incidents. The help desk is reactive in nature, but is expected to be efficient and speedy. The IT help desk can be separate from or part of a larger service desk operation to improve the overall organization’s customer services.

Some key traits of the help desk include:

• Acting as a single point of contact (SPOC) for IT support
• Using a tracking solution for all incoming incidents
• Automating ticket tracking, routing, and email notifications
• Offering basic incident and service request management
• Some (limited) integrating with other ITSM practices, such as configuration management and knowledge management
• Some areas/applications supported by specialty groups outside of the help desk
• Providing Levels 1 and 2 support and pass incident ownership if escalation is needed
• Displaying basic self-service options for end users

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Who might opt for a help desk? A toolset designed for a help desk is likely to provide support for incident and service request management and basic change enablement functionality. For smaller, less complex organizations, with minimal reliance on IT, this is a sensible and cost-effective option.

I work with many smaller organizations to improve their capabilities in IT service management and, virtually without exception, most are barely scraping the surface on utilizing the capabilities of the toolset they have purchased and implemented. These businesses could have saved considerable cash and reaped the same rewards from a simple help desk solution—a full-blown service management solution is not for everyone.

What is a service desk?

The IT service desk is a generally broader function that is more strategic and cross-organizational. A service desk looks at the wider business needs and context rather than being solely focused on resolving the user’s needs, as a help desk does.

The ITIL definition of the service desk (service operation) is the single point of contact between the service provider and the users. A typical service desk manages incidents and service requests and handles communication with the users. The service desk typically has a help desk component, but its overall goal is to be proactive in improving IT and business processes across the organization. The best service desks are constantly looking for opportunities to run all IT processes, including the help desk, more efficiently.

Some key traits of the service desk are:

• Fully integrating with other ITSM processes
• Acting as SPOC for all IT areas, applications, and business processes
• Tracking compliance with service level agreements (SLAs)
• Providing a self-service capability for incident and service requests, with an integrated service catalog
• Integrating and communicating with the configuration management database (CMDB)

A more mature organization with complex IT systems, integrations with third party vendors and a critical reliance on their IT infrastructure will, almost certainly, need a full-blown ITSM solution with an integrated service desk function.