Service Desk structures
Service Desk structures
The service desk can be structured in a number of ways. The structure should be driven by the nature of the business supported. Factors such as user skill profile and geographical location of users will influence the structure.
Service desk structures are defined below. Local service desk: Local service desks (Figure 24.1) are situated adjacent to the
users that they support. Frequently, this means that they are in the same building or on the same site as the people who contact them.
Figure 24.1 Local service desk (Source: The Cabinet Office ITIL Service Operation ISBN 978-0-113313-07-5)
Customer site
Service desk
Request management
Technical
Application
IT operations
Third-party
management
management
support
fulfilment
THE SERVICE DESK
The advantages of such a structure are visibility of the service desk function and easy communication links. However, there are disadvantages such as the risk of incidents not being prioritised in line with business impact because users are able to physically appear at the service desk and request/demand action. Another potential disadvantage is that service desk staff are not used as efficiently as they would be under other service desk structures because they are ‘fixed’ in one place supporting local users.
Good reasons for adopting a local service desk structure include time zone restric- tions, language issues, the requirement to support a specialist group of users needing specialist support or the requirement to support specific services which again require specialist support. There may even be arguments for having a local service desk adjacent to and available to key users. Such key users may be impor- tant functionally, in that they undertake processes critical to the business of the organisation or hierarchically in that are at a senior level. (N.B. seniority should not drive the prioritisation of an incident. Incidents should always be prioritised on the basis of business impact and urgency.)
Centralised service desk: Typically, organisations have moved away from local service desks to adopting a centralised service desk (Figure 24.2). Efficiency and cost-effectiveness are the reasons for this. Economies of scale can be exploited by having all of the organisation’s service desk staff in one physical location. By adopt- ing a single telephone number, calls from anywhere in the organisation will be directed to the centralised service desk. It should not matter to the user where their call is dealt with; their only interest ought to be the way in which the call is handled.
Figure 24.2 Centralised service desk (Source: The Cabinet Office ITIL Service Operation ISBN 978-0-113313-07-5)
User User User User
User User User User
User User User User
Customer site 1
Customer site 2
Customer site 3
Service desk
Request management
Technical
Application
IT operations
Third-party
management
management
support
fulfilment
IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT
Virtual service desk: From the user’s point of view, the response they receive from
a virtual service desk (Figure 24.3) will be the same as the one they receive from a centralised service desk. However, the persons who operate a virtual service desk can be in a number of different locations. By utilising a single universal tool, users are able to obtain a service which is the same regardless of their location or the location of the responding service desk staff.
One advantage of such a structure is that it allows far greater staff flexibility. Staff may be able to work from home or organisations may be able to be more efficient by using offshore working by some or all of the service desk staff. There is, however, a risk that service quality lacks consistency and this is something that needs to be managed via metrics designed to measure the quality of service from the various locations.
Follow the sun: Organisations with sites around the world may find it more efficient to switch between two or three service desks during a 24-hour period. For example, the service desk based in Singapore would take all the incom- ing calls for eight hours prior to switching to the Madrid service desk. Madrid would be the service desk through normal European working hours before switching to Chicago. After another eight hours, Chicago would switch back to Singapore and so on.
Figure 24.3 Virtual service desk (Source: The Cabinet Office ITIL Service Operation ISBN 978-0-113313-07-5)
San Francisco service desk
Paris Rio de service desk
Janeiro service desk
Virtual service desk
Sydney Beijing
service desk service desk
Service knowledge management system
London service desk
THE SERVICE DESK
The advantage of this approach is that it makes it possible for service desk staff to work a normal shift without the need for overtime and additional payments.
A ‘follow the sun’ approach relies on good handovers between the sites. Language can
be an issue and it is crucial that information from users is recorded in a central tool in such a way that it is understood wherever it is picked up.
Specialised service desk groups: Within service desks it is possible to put together specialist groups who perhaps look after one particular high profile or complex service. Where this happens, calls can be routed to the specialist group via the telephony with an option being given to the caller to divert to the group.