- For many organizations, the end-user community now includes a wide range of technology sophistication. Some users continue to depend on the IT Service Desk while others turn to web searches and coworkers before contacting IT. As a result, the Service Desk has new competitors for level 1 support but still receives complex and unsolved issues.
- IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has become a global standard for Service Desk best practices, but this is not helping IT leaders to develop a viable Service Desk strategy.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Service gaps have emerged as a subset of users attempting to self-solve. As a result, the Service Desk is not involved in the initial stages of some technical solutions, and the Service Desk statistics do not reflect the true cost and nature of support needs. The fact that users are helping each other often leads to sub-optimal and incorrect solutions.
- The focus for IT needs to shift from “How can we satisfy user support needs at the lowest cost to IT?” to “What is the most cost-effective way to solve the user’s technology problems and get them back to work?”
- Key pieces of the Service Desk technology capability are under-utilized. These include the Knowledge Base content, solution templates, and incident categorization.
Impact and Result
- Understand the value of developing a Service Desk strategy that is aligned with corporate and IT strategy.
- Right-size your ITIL orientation.
- Implement the best mix of Service Desk channels for your organization.