ByLEO GIOSUÈ
Updated:

The entire world of IT management is in a constant state of change. Terminology is updated and revised daily, and definitions differ from company to company, nation to nation, and even culture to culture. Ask 10 random IT staff members the difference between service desks and help desks, and you're likely to get 10 different answers.

But, when you get down to definitions, there really are quite a few differences between the two, especially when it comes to every day, on the ground work. One of the best, big picture ways to envision the two is to view a help desk as a reactive entity, closely named to what were called complaint departments in traditional companies. Here are some key concepts that can help even the most confused end users and non-techie staff understand how help desk and service desk are not terms that can be used interchangeably.

Subsets


Is a steering wheel a car? Of course not, but it's an essential part of one. A help desk is part of a service desk, the latter being the organization's central point of contact between all IT users and the IT department. Just as a car contains many thousands of parts and components, so does a service desk. One of those components serves end users exclusively and represents just a fraction of the functionality and power of the service desk.

Tactical Response


The word help in help desk has important meaning. It indicates a role that is about assisting end users who run into difficulty with tech-related issues. Those needs tend to be immediate and are typically described as incidents. This tactical approach, one that is immediately reactive and fast, is what IT help desks are all about. You could say they put out fires, mostly small ones, in order to keep them from spreading. In the vast majority of cases, the help desk is a part of the larger service desk. However, some organizations like to describe their end user tactical desks as stand-alone entities, totally separate from the service desk.

Origins


When company practices include goals like managing the service function of IT, there's usually a help-desk lurking somewhere in the background. That's because these ad-hoc, tactical help desk units grew from a different need than the larger, service-oriented service desks. Even a decade ago, some of the most common requests that flowed into a company's help desk on a daily basis included classics like:

  • I need to update my company computer password.
  • The department's printer/scanner is not working.
  • I am unable to gain access to my files and sensitive documents.
  • My computer has completely stopped working. It's totally frozen.
  • The company computer network is unbearably slow for some reason.
  • I need to re-set my password for voicemail/email/accounts.
  • I keep getting error notifications when I attempt to use the video-conference function.
  • I'm repeatedly receiving 'needs updating' dialog boxes when I try to use the Acrobat reader.

Notice a common feature of the above most-frequent help desk requests? They're all immediate needs, and they all pertain to end users who have varying degrees of technical competence. The good news is that those questions and requests are so common that they can usually be resolved in just a few minutes.

Core Functions


In management theory, there's a concept about coming up with job titles based on what people actually do. For example, is someone manages the parts department, an apt title would be parts department manager, rather than vice president of customer goods oversight. The goal is to use real words that everyone can understand. In IT, we can get to the root of what a help desk is by simply looking at what they usually do. Of course, there's a lot of variance among companies, but here are some of the essential tasks that most every help desk performs:

  • Tracks every incident that is reported to it.
  • Gives end users multiple choices for self-service.
  • Automatically sorts tickets by how immediate the need is.
  • Assigns tickets to specific IT personnel for resolution.
  • Notifies end users about status of incidents and when an incident is resolved.

It's important to realize that there is no definitive list, and much depends on the size of the organization, how IT-focused it is, how many end users it has, and what management's priorities are in regard to providing assistance for IT incidents.