Help Desk vs. Service Desk vs. ITSM: The Importance of Knowing the Difference
When implementing new IT solutions, businesses can employ a number of strategies to improve existing systems. In many cases, the value of these strategies correlates to their scale. Businesses of different sizes have varying needs that scale alongside them—larger organizations with system-wide setbacks often require sizable investments to obtain evenly matched software solutions.
This kind of scalability parallels the relationship between comparable IT tools, like a help desk vs. a service desk, and includes broader concepts, like IT service management (ITSM). However, reducing them to an ascending order of scale oversimplifies things: the comparison offers no insight into their specific differences, nor indicates which strategy is best suited to certain business situations. To help clarify the differences between a help desk, a service desk, and ITSM, this post will break down each one and discuss:
- Definitions of help desk vs. service desk vs. ITSM
- What kind of business needs each
- How to rapidly implement the solution that works for you
Let’s dive into each, then we can get a clearer look at the proper next step for any business.
Help Desk vs. Service Desk vs. ITSM: Definitions
While we discussed earlier how these tools relate to one another in terms of scale, it is vital to understand where exactly the dividing line rests between each. This delineation can help identify the best approach for specific business situations we’ll cover in the following sections.
Help Desk
A help desk is an IT resource that focuses primarily on incident and problem management by routing tickets as they arrive to solve each issue in turn. This provides the basic function of IT support, which is to ensure a business can provide assistance to its internal team and its clients.
Typically, this is the first step business owners take in developing an IT support system. It’s simple, cheap, and provides staff and clients with the answers they need. However, help desks don’t offer brands much advantage in terms of customer success. They also fall short in developing strong business relationships, which are vital to the continued growth and success of any B2B vendor or service provider.
Service Desk
A service desk provides the same basic functionality of a help desk but adds unique value by providing a service component as well. This is because a service desk is a more comprehensive term for a system that includes a basic help desk, but also provides more in the way of customer success. The additional features of a service desk include but aren’t limited to:
- Self-service portals to simplify personalized ticket creation and information sharing for clients and staff.
- Educational knowledge bases that include standard FAQ pages, as well as client answers to common questions not covered by FAQs.
- Proactive service structures that offer check-ins and pre-made video and text-based training for clients.
Service desks provide an additional level of customer service that is required for developing better business relationships, encouraging contract renewals, and even generating leads.
IT Service Management
Beyond the service desk, ITSM is an even broader term that refers to an entire service management structure that provides quality service at every step of the customer journey. ITSM solutions go above and beyond, addressing every possible scenario through best practices laid out by proven frameworks like the information technology internet library (ITIL) 4.
Businesses that develop an ITSM infrastructure are better situated to handle the more complicated and technical aspects of running a larger business, including:
- Configuration management of IT assets
- Change management to address the growth, lifecycle, and reconfiguration of those assets
- Relationship management to create a holistic client view to better serve their needs.
ITSM systems cover all of this and much more, as we have discussed in previous articles. These advanced frameworks are designed to meet the needs of businesses of any size, all the way through the enterprise level.
What Solution Fits Your Business?
As we’ve discussed, a business typically adopts these solutions step-by-step, as it grows over time. Simpler solutions will only solve more basic issues, whereas more comprehensive options may require a larger investment than what is feasible for a smaller-scale organization.
| Business Size and Optimal IT Service Solutions | |||
| Small Businesses < 50 employeesor < $50 million in revenue |
Help Desk | Service Desk | ITSM |
| ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Mid-size businesses50 to 100 employees or $50 million to 1 billion in revenue | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Large businesses 100+ employees or > $1 billion in revenue |
✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
Generally, as businesses grow to mid-size and beyond, the difference between help desk vs. service desk vs. ITSM becomes increasingly pronounced. Service desks and ITSM can provide value beyond larger businesses though, as they still have plenty to offer small businesses.
The best way for growing businesses to reap the benefits of each solution, without investing more than is initially required, is to adopt a software platform that offers all three options. This allows brands to scale each aspect of their IT infrastructure modularly, as they see fit, and scale their investment over time to match growth in other areas.
Vivantio Helps You Adopt Solutions That Grow With You
While each of the benefits we’ve discussed can work wonders for your business, none will help if managers choose a platform that doesn’t offer all the necessary features. Vivantio’s cutting-edge customer service software platform offers everything listed and more, including:
- Endless integrations for easy implementation
- Automatic ticket routing to ensure every ticket reaches the proper agent
- Workflow designer tool that allows managers to customize the framework of their CS operations without any prior technical knowledge
- White-label service portals so businesses can ensure cohesive branding throughout the service process
- A holistic view of each client to ensure all agents can access vital information
For businesses that strive to elevate their customer experience approach, Vivantio offers a premium option.
