Differences between Help Desk and Service Desk

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Help Desk Software vs Service Desk Software

If you are thinking about hiring a software to support, especially, your IT department, you need to have a clear understanding of the concepts of “Help Desk Software” (or Help Desk) and “Service Desk Software” (or Service Desk), and to know if there are differences between them, or if it is only a semantic distinction.

Many say that they are synonymous concepts, but many others consider them to be different concepts, and everyone is right, so the purpose of this article is to define the two notions and let you be the one to decide if there are differences between “Help Desk Software” and “Service Desk Software”.

We will start with the most used concepts, define for which companies each of them is recommended and we will present the final conclusions for you to decide if there are differences between Help Desk Software and Service Desk Software.

What is a Help Desk Software?

The main purpose of Help Desk software is to help solve quickly the immediate needs of customers and internal users, as well as technical problems and incidents.

Help Desk software is reactive in nature, although it must be efficient and fast and can be separate or part of a larger Service Desk that aims to improve the services offered to the organization’s customer in general.

Characteristics of a Help Desk software

Some of the characteristics that a help desk software must fulfill are:

Act as a single point of contact (SPOC) for IT support.
Work only with a solution that allows you to effectively track and manage all incoming incidents
Provide basic incident and service request management
Automate ticket tracking and manage your email notifications
Integration with other ITSM practices: configuration management and knowledge management
Offer communication channels between the agent and the end user, such as integration with e-mails, chats, user portal…

The reactive nature of Help Desk software makes it possible to resolve unexpected incidents, both within the organization and the services offered by the company. It also allows to manage problems when they arise, keeping a record and subsequent control to provide a resolution.
The Help Desk software is oriented to facilitate the communication between the support team and the clients or users to help them to solve the problems and incidents.

*Example of ServiceTonic’s dashboard

What type of companies require a Help Desk software?

For small and less complex companies that do not require an IT department dependency, hiring a help desk software is a good option.

What is a Service Desk software?

A Service Desk software includes the same as a Help Desk Software, but, in addition, it allows you to plan, structure and provide the delivery of a range of IT services. It has a more strategic and cross-departmental function than its little brother help desk software.

According to the ITIL definition, Service Desk software is the single point of contact between the service provider and end customers when handling service requests as well as communication between the company and users.

A Service Desk software generally includes elements such as a Service Catalog or asset databases (CMDB).

Characteristics of a Service Desk software

Some of the most important features of a Service Desk software are the following:

Full integration with other ITSM processes
Acting as SPOC for all areas of IT, applications and business processes
Service level agreement (SLA) compliance tracking
Integrated Service Catalog provides self-service capability for incidents and service requests
Integration and communication with the CMDB asset database.

Service Desk software is the big brother to Help Desk software and serves as the single point of contact between the organization and its customers. And unlike help desk software which is reactive in nature, service desk software allows the planning of preventive maintenance that avoids and anticipates future incidents.

*Example of how to manage an asset with the ServiceTonic CMDB

What type of company requires service desk software?

The type of company that requires a service desk software is one that has complex IT systems, requiring integrations with third party providers and a high dependency on its IT infrastructure.

These are companies that need a complete ITSM solution with integrated Service Desk software.

Conclusions: Are there differences between help desk software and service desk software?

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, within the ITSM world there is a distinction between those who believe that there are differences between help desk software and service desk software and those who do not.

But in conclusion, everyone is right, ITIL in particular and ITSM in general, provide a framework and ideas to help you configure the functionality needed to support your organization.

Does ServiceTonic meet your needs?

After knowing the differences between help desk software and service desk software, the tool you hire should meet the following best practices:

Easy to use

Both the organization’s agents and the end users or customers will have to work with the chosen software on a daily basis. ServiceTonic is a help desk and service desk software fully configurable to your needs and intuitive and simple to use, without the need for programming knowledge.

Choose the features you need

ServiceTonic allows you to choose a multitude of functionalities according to your needs. For example, if you want to automate processes, ServiceTonic allows you to use different tools, such as business rules, maintenance contract management…

Know your needs and discover how ServiceTonic can help you meet them.

Simple communication with your end users

ServiceTonic offers you different communication channels between your organization’s agents and your users:

Chat: ServiceTonic includes a chat channel between the customer’s user portal with an agent of the organization, which aims to streamline communication between the two actors.
Chatbot: offer your customers immediate answers to common and specific questions. When the conversation increases in complexity, you can refer the chat to a connected agent. In case no agent is available, a ticket will be created to manage it later.
ForumTonic: is the collaborative tool included in ServiceTonic. A discussion space where both agents and users can connect. You decide who participates in each channel, in each topic, and which permissions the different actors have depending on their role.
Mail: It is possible to create a ticket from an email to the responsible agent.
User portal: Fully customizable according to the customer’s needs, allowing instant communication between customer and agent.

Acts as a SPOC

ServiceTonic acts as a SPOC for all IT areas, applications and business processes, i.e. it unifies all information channels in a single point.

ServiceTonic includes all these benefits and many more.

Created with the objective of being your help desk or service desk software, its high level of optimization allows you to choose the functionalities that your company needs, and its high level of customization, without the need for programming knowledge, allows you to adapt the tool to the needs of your company.

ServiceTonic can be your help desk software or your service desk software thanks to its high level of customization and optimization.

Choose the features that best meet your organization’s needs and start delivering great service to your customers.

Try ServiceTonic for free

We invite you to try ServiceTonic for free and discover how you can customize it to your needs.

Try ServiceTonic for free for 14 days.