Contributors
- Jason Aqui, IT Director, Bellevue College
- Kevin Sigil, IT Director, Southwest Care Centre
- Lucas Gutierrez, Service Desk Manager, City of Santa Fe
- Rama Dhuwaraha, CIO, University of North Texas System
- Annelie Rugg, CIO, UCLA Humanities
- Owen McKeith, Manager IT Infrastructure, Canpotex
- Rod Gula, IT Director, American Realty Association
- Rosalba Trujillo, Service Desk Manager, Northgate Markets
- Jason Metcalfe, IT Manager, Mesalabs
- Bradley Rodgers, IT Manager, SecureTek
- Daun Costa, IT Manager, Pita Pit
- Kari Petty, Service Desk Manager, Mansfield Oil
- Denis Borka, Service Desk Manager, PennTex Midstream
- Lateef Ashekun, IT Manager, City of Atlanta
- Ted Zeisner, IT Manager, University of Ottawa Institut de Cardiologie
Your Challenge
- Not everyone embraces their role in service support. Specialists would rather work on projects than provide service support.
- The Service Desk lacks processes and workflows to provide consistent service. Service desk managers struggle to set and meet service-level expectations, which further compromises end-user satisfaction.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Service desk improvement is an exercise in organizational change. Engage specialists across the IT organization in building the solution. Establish a single service-support team across the IT group and enforce it with a cooperative, customer-focused culture.
- Don’t be fooled by a tool that’s new. A new service desk tool alone won’t solve the problem. Service desk maturity improvements depend on putting in place the right people and processes to support the technology.
Impact and Result
- Create a consistent customer service experience for service desk patrons, and increase efficiency, first-call resolution, and end-user satisfaction with the Service Desk.
- Decrease time and cost to resolve service desk tickets.
- Understand and address reporting needs to address root causes and measure success and build a solid foundation for future IT service improvements.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is an eight call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Lay service desk foundations
Call #1 - Conduct current-state assessment. Review shift-left service support strategy.
Call #2 - Identify operations metrics, and reports. Review ticket handling procedures.
Guided Implementation #2 - Design incident management processes
Call #1 - Map out incident management workflows.
Call #2 - Design categorization and identify escalation points.
Call #3 - Design prioritization guidelines and service-level objectives.
Guided Implementation #3 - Design request fulfilment processes
Call #1 - Differentiate between requests and projects, build request workflows, and make a self-service portal plan.
Call #2 - Design processes and workflows to produce a targeted knowledgebase.
Guided Implementation #4 - Plan the implementation of the service desk
Call #1 - Build a communication plan and implementation roadmap.

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Service Desk
Strengthen your service desk to build a strong foundation for ITSM maturity.
This course makes up part of the Infrastructure & Operations Certificate.
Course information:
- Title: Service Desk
- Number of Course Modules: 5
- Estimated Time to Complete: 2-2.5 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- Michel Hebert, Research Director, Infrastructure Practice
- Natalie Sansone, Research Manager, Infrastructure Practice
- Now Playing: Academy: Service Desk | Executive Brief
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Lay Service Desk Foundations
The Purpose
Discover your challenges and understand what roles, metrics, and ticket handling procedures are needed to tackle the challenges.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Set a clear understanding about the importance of service desk to your organization and service desk best practices.
Activities
Outputs
Assess current state of the service desk.
- Current state assessment
Review service desk and shift-left strategy.
- Shift-left strategy and implications
Identify agent roles and responsibilities.
- Roles and responsibilities
Identify service desk metrics and reports.
- Service desk metrics and reports
Module 2: Design Incident Management
The Purpose
- Build workflows for incident and critical incident tickets.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Distinguish incidents from service requests.
- Ticket categorization facilitates ticket. routing and reporting.
- Develop an SLA for your service desk team for a consistent service delivery.
Activities
Outputs
Build incident identification and logging processes.
- Incident management challenges and metrics
Build incident and critical incident management workflows.
- Incident and critical incident management workflows
Design ticket categorization scheme and proper ticket handling guidelines.
- Ticket categorization scheme
Design incident escalation and prioritization guidelines.
- Ticket escalation and prioritization guidelines
Module 3: Design Request Fulfilment
The Purpose
- Build service request workflows and prepare self-service portal.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Standardize request fulfilment processes.
- Prepare for better knowledge management and leverage self-service portal to facilitate shift-left strategy.
Activities
Outputs
Build service request workflows.
- Distinguishing criteria for requests and projects
- Service request workflows and SLAs
Build a targeted knowledgebase.
- Knowledgebase article template, processes, and workflows
Prepare for a self-serve portal project.
- Self-service portal examples
Module 4: Build Project Implementation Plan
The Purpose
- Now that you have laid the foundation of your service desk, put all the initiatives into an action plan.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Discuss priorities, set timeline, and identify effort for your service desk.
- Identify the benefits and impacts of communicating service desk initiatives to stakeholders and define channels to communicate service desk changes.
Activities
Outputs
Build a communication plan.
- Project communication plan and workshop summary presentation
Build an implementation roadmap.
- Project implementation and task list with associated owners
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
City Of Bakersfield
Guided Implementation
10/10
$12,733
9
Cobb EMC
Workshop
10/10
$29,923
95
Natural Resources Canada
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
Keyano College
Guided Implementation
10/10
$25,000
5
Keyano College
Guided Implementation
10/10
$25,000
10
Cross Country Mortgage, Inc.
Guided Implementation
10/10
$29,923
20
Knights of Columbus
Workshop
10/10
$2,546
20
Westmoreland Mining LLC
Workshop
8/10
N/A
5
Cayman Islands Health Services Authority
Guided Implementation
8/10
$11,460
23
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
Workshop
10/10
N/A
50
Utah Valley University
Workshop
8/10
$31,833
20
City of Virginia Beach
Guided Implementation
10/10
$14,643
20
Adler University
Guided Implementation
10/10
$20,500
120
Dark Fibre Africa
Guided Implementation
8/10
$29,923
23
Edmonton Economic Development Corporation
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
5
Clark Schaefer Hackett
Guided Implementation
9/10
$11,460
20
Government Employees Health Association Inc
Workshop
10/10
$28,013
9
Department of Justice Canada
Workshop
9/10
N/A
N/A
University Of Regina
Guided Implementation
9/10
$47,500
20
Department of Justice Canada
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Aecon Construction Group Inc.
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Tonkin and Taylor Ltd
Guided Implementation
7/10
$2,546
5
Novus Print
Guided Implementation
9/10
$17,944
5
Darn Tough
Guided Implementation
8/10
$12,733
10
AgCountry Farm Credit Services
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
5
Gallagher
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
10
Broome-Tioga Boces
Workshop
9/10
$31,833
75
Rosens Diversified
Workshop
9/10
$20,373
20
MCAP Service Corporation
Guided Implementation
9/10
$10,000
5
Toromont CAT
Workshop
10/10
N/A
75