Local Service Desk

Service Desk organizational structure

Service Desk objectives

The primary aim of the Service Desk is to restore the ‘normal service ’ to the users as quickly as possible. In this context ‘ restoration of service ’ is meant in the widest possible sense. While this could involve fixing a technical fault, it could equally involve fulfilling a service request or answering a query – anything that is needed to allow the users to return to working satisfactorily.

Specific responsibilities will include:

• Logging all relevant incident /service request details, allocating categorization and prioritization codes
• Providing first-line investigation and diagnosis
• Resolving those incidents/service requests they are able
• Escalating incidents/service requests that they cannot resolve within agreed timescales
• Keeping users informed of progress
• Closing all resolved incidents, requests and other calls
• Conducting customer /user satisfaction call-backs/surveys as agreed
• Communication with users – keeping them informed of incident progress, notifying them of impending changes or agreed outages, etc.
• Updating the CMS under the direction and approval of Configuration Management if so agreed.

Note: these activities are explained and set in context with the fuller Incident Management and Request Fulfilment process in sections 4.2 and 4.3 respectively.

There are many ways of structuring Service Desks and locating them – and the correct solution will vary for different organizations. The primary options are detailed below, but in reality an organization may need to implement a structure that combines a number of these options in order to fully meet the business needs:

This is where a desk is co-located within or physically close to the user community it serves. This often aids communication and gives a clearly visible presence, which some users like, but can often be inefficient and expensive to resource as staff are tied up waiting to deal with incidents when the volume and arrival rate of calls may not justify this.

There may, however, be some valid reasons for maintaining a local desk, even where call volumes alone do not justify this. Reasons might include:

• Language and cultural or political differences
• Different time zones
• Specialized groups of users
• The existence of customized or specialized services that require specialist knowledge
• VIP/criticality status of users.

Figure 6.2 Local Service Desk

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23