Difference Between an IT Service Desk, Help Desk or Call Center?

Companies often use the terms "call center", "helpdesk" and "customer service" interchangeably, which can be confusing. ITIL treats call centers and help tables as limited types of service tables, offering only part of what a service desk offers. With ITIL adopting a service-centered perspective and focusing on IT, this makes sense. For many companies, the definition of ITIL does not align with operational practices, which makes the distinction much more complicated. Here are explanations of the help desk and contact center features to provide a contrast to an IT service.

Help Desk

A help desk is a resource intended to provide the client or internal user with information and assistance related to the processes, products and services of a company. The purpose of a helpdesk support is to provide a centralized resource to answer questions, solve problems and provide solutions to known problems. Common examples of help desks include: technical support centers, product support / warranty functions, employee benefit banks and facility support centers. Technical support can be provided through several channels, including physical locations, free numbers, websites, instant messaging or email.

Call Center

A call center or contact center is a central point for managing contacts and interactions with customers. office in charge of handling a large volume of inquiries usually by phone (but could also include letters, faxes, social networks, instant messages or emails). Incoming call centers are often used for services such as product support, customer service, order processing and telephone services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Outbound call centers are used for activities such as telemarketing, debt collection and research. market. A company can have multiple call centers that support different parts of business operations (including IT) and can be managed internally or through an external agency.

As you can see, there are many overlays between the definitions of the help desk, the call center and the IT service desk. The distinction between them revolves around the scope of what the function covers and how they are structured:

An assistance service focuses on providing "help" and "repair" support. Support services should not focus on IT and can be used to admit exceptions to normal operations that take place throughout the company. They can be physical locations that interact directly with applicants in person or remote / virtual locations that use technologies such as telephone, email, chat and other technologies to facilitate virtual interaction.

Call centers are the most complete in the area of ​​the problems they cover, including technical and non-technical problems. Call centers do not personally interact with candidates and always involve some sort of intermediate technology to facilitate participation.

The IT service tables focus only on IT service support, but manage both responsive "guide" services and routine tasks such as resource provisioning, access management, etc. IT service tables can be physical locations that users can visit in person or remote operations such as a call center. Those who are ITIL experts can say that the help desk is tactical while the service desk is strategic; This will vary from one organization to another.

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