Support Desk VS Help Desk: Is There a Difference

Awhile back I wrote a post with definitions of a service desk, a help desk, and a support desk. I wonder if those definitions have held up?

What do you think?

You Say Service Desk, I Say Help Desk; Don't Call the Whole Thing Off!

I really want to hear from you. It is important for me to know how people look at these terms, what the terms mean to them.

Thanks!

 

4 Ways to Add Strategic Value to Your Customer Service Desk

Smart companies have realized their customer support desks have strategic value. The Service Desk can:

 

1. Operate as a profit center rather than a cost center
   
2. Handle business growth without adding headcount.
   
3. Improve communication internally throughout the organization and externally to customers.
   
4. Leverage existing IT investments while implementing next generation technology.
   

 

How?

Since the service desk already has contact with the customer, there is the chance to up-sell or cross-sell.

Through automation and self service, more business can be handled by the same number of staff. Moreover, incidents can be tracked from end-to-end.

Through knowledge management, the same information is available to everyone from the service desk to the self service center. Everyone from customers to internal staff will receive the same answer to a particular question.

Existing IT solutions can be integrated with a next generation customer service solution that can scale with the company's growth.

You say Service Desk, I say Help Desk: Don't call the whole thing off

Customer Support and Help Desks do happen to share a few functions: problem logging, problem assignment, problem escalation, problem tracking to resolution, problem trending, and a knowledge base for sharing the answers to problems.

Clearly, both of these departments work on problems.

However, it is most commonly accepted that a help desk is inward facing and used by internal staff. Customer Support is outwardly focused and used by people external to the business. Usually customers. (Makes sense)

For further differentiation, here is a list of functions generally found in help desks but not customer support:

Tracking configuration changes
Tracking IT inventory
Managing IT assets
Creating SLAs
Developing reports for various uses

Meanwhile, the customer support desk can be found doing these where the help desk generally doesn't:

Manage opportunities
Up selling or cross selling
Planning marketing activities
Dispatching field service
Implementing personalized customer experiences

Whew! I'm glad we got that out of the way. I hope you find it instructive. If anyone has anything to add, we'd like to hear it.