Help Desk vs. Support: What’s the difference?

Have you ever heard people discussing the differences between help desks, support, and IT service management (ITSM)? Surprisingly, we listened.

Some argue that the help desk is outdated compared to the IT-centric support that emerged in the late 1980s, with little attention paid to the end user. They may say that the support was invented to describe a new focus on timely service to end users. They also argue that ITSM is characterized by proactive capabilities such as remote monitoring and automating tasks such as update management.

We have also heard all the help desk, support, and ITSM terms such as time-to-ticket resolution, change management, active listening, average call duration, mixed call center, cost per contact, escalation, etc. The list of such words is long.

Is it really that important what you call your IT support team? After all, many help desks are very active, automated, and end-user-oriented. In turn, help desks can spend a lot of time-solving IT problems, depending on the organization’s mission. ITSM may also not provide automated services due to system incompatibilities and integration issues.

Regardless of what you call these support teams, there are many solutions to help you better meet customer needs.

Be that as it may, the goals of IT support are the same:

• Resolve issues quickly and efficiently so employees can get back to work. One of the best solutions to machine-related problems is bi-directional integration between IT asset management and customer service software. When support agents receive tickets, they can see the status of an employee’s asset, the service they need, the renewal schedule, age, how the asset is used, etc. This bi-directional capability between IT asset management and customer service software allows them to provide fast and quality service.
• Attracting and retaining the most competent knowledge workers in a world where every company is a technology company. Organizations must constantly equip employees with the best technology to keep them happy and maximize productivity.
• Protecting the organization’s significant intellectual property (IP). Each brilliant asset is a window into your network that can shed light on the proprietary IC that is the lifeblood of any organization.
• Ensuring IT efficiency by automating manual tasks to save time. This will require integrating best-in-class technologies and disparate systems and creating a workflow that gets the job done for you. The IoT revolution will only increase the need for automation as IT support teams move from managing desktops, laptops, and smartphones to keeping track of many things. They will need to determine which sensor is faulty on a wind turbine or why an intelligent car behaves stupidly. IoT will go beyond IT asset management and enter a new era of Thing Management.
• Finding outlets that tie together solutions, messaging, system management, mobile device management, single sign-on, and financial tools for your help desk. With so many APIs and simple integration options, it no longer makes sense to let all these systems work separately. Their integration will make your life easier and reduce manual work.
• Helping the organization to always be ready for reports and audits. With a single data source for every asset centralized in one place, companies can be audit-ready at all times and make the monthly/quarterly/annual audit process a breeze.
• Make it as easy as possible to report issues in ways that are convenient for end users. Some integrations allow users to create support tickets in their favorite collaboration software. Instead of filling out support tickets when they have a problem or need.

It’s time to stop talking about what to call IT support capabilities because there are more important things to consider: the onslaught of IoT (by the way, we are a premium partner for Google Cloud IoT Core), the need to integrate best-in-class technologies, security, matching and more. Customer service expectations have changed to be more selective, and employees now expect the same standard in their workplace.

Zendesk is excellent at delivering the best customer experience, which means it’s good at creating the same experience for your internal teams. With Zendesk, internal teams can create seamless, reliable, and productive solutions for their employees. Because when companies work hard for their employees, their employees work even better for them in return. Cloudfresh is a Zendesk Select Partner – we are happy to provide clients with consultations, trial access to Zendesk products, configure modules, and implement and provide support in Ukraine and Central and Eastern Europe.