What is the difference between Help Desk and Service Desk? Service Desk: order in servicing users Service desk


InfraManager, as a Service Desk system - a solution for managing service requests technical support, allows IT specialists to prioritize work, fulfill and not lose sight of all user requests.
Order in the service department is the basis High Quality user services.

Save time on customer support

InfraManager helps optimize the work of technical support through the use of time-saving tools, such as user self-service, business process automation, and knowledge base. Approval now does not require running around with papers and memos. All information on applications and tasks, their status and deadlines is collected in one place - the IT expert’s personal account.

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  • A unified log of requests to all departments of the IT service for 100% of requests (including incidents, service requests, change requests, requests for consultations);
  • Self-service portal for users with the ability to register applications, obtain information about the status and processing history of previously registered applications;
  • A unified catalog of IT services with the distribution of areas of responsibility within the IT service;
  • Time sheet for an IT employee with automatic substitution of work from applications and the ability to enter labor costs for different types tasks - projects, engineering works etc;
  • Consolidated working time schedule for the IT manager to analyze, coordinate and approve time sheets of subordinates. A complete picture of staff workload without any reports.

At your disposal ready-made tool to organize and control the work of the support service

Set the rules of the game- what categories of users are served and how. A service catalog and SLA will help streamline the understanding of who is responsible for what within the IT department and to clients.

Set process automation rules maintenance without programming. The graphical business process editor was created so that you can easily customize and rearrange processes to suit your tasks.

Set reporting rules and analyze the most important indicators: customer satisfaction, IT specialist workload, and the status of critical services.

Put it into practice consider work time IT experts and examine workload and quality of work. You will ensure fair working conditions and bonuses for IT employees.

Give users help yourself

IN InfraManager The service catalog is responsible for helping the user correctly formulate his need or problem. Simple search and the ability to set your favorite services will make it easier to create both unique and similar requests. IN personal account clients will be able to always see what is happening with their requests and will not distract IT experts with unnecessary questions.

No one lost or missed ticket

Review client

Sushin Alexander Yakovlevich

Deputy Managing Director for information technology JSC "Reductor-PM":

“So far we have only been able to realize our basic needs, but we are interested not to stop there. In 2017, we plan to seriously study the issue of statistics management using the InfraManager Company methodology, built on Six Sigma methods. Our plans, based on realistic data, are to formulate optimal SLA parameters - not only achievable, but also meeting the requirements of the management of Reductor-PM JSC.
The second direction of development of the project should be the automation of IT processes, on which the speed and quality of processing user requests depends: automation of typical service requests (primarily related to providing access to various IT resources), change management of IT services, etc. d. Together with project team With InfraManager we can implement our tasks faster and more efficiently. Their methods and experience allow us to see the full picture and build cause-and-effect relationships when developing and making decisions.”

InfraManager Service Desk -
optimal solution for

IT departments
in number

From 15

IT departments,
in which

From 2

Support lines

Companies with a number
users

From 500

Upgrade your Customer Support

You have additional opportunities to reduce application processing times. Find out from us how to get

Complete information about IT assets when processing user requests

Integration with external systems(AD, HR)

Integration with telephony(Asterisk, Panasonic, etc.)

InfraManager: profitable investment
into the future of the IT department

An automation project based on the ITSM system InfraManager provides significant benefits for IT and business:

  • Reducing operating costs for supporting and managing IT processes and IT personnel
  • Conscious decision-making and planning for the development of the Help Desk with an understanding of what interferes with core activities and what really requires change
  • Predictable timelines for resolving incidents and service requests
  • Statistical analysis of processes to calculate guaranteed achievable SLA parameters for various services

Order in Service Desk- that's the main thing

  • Registration of 100% of requests through all channels of receipt
  • Fully automated distribution of tickets to responsible executors
  • Automated behavior and routing of tickets and tasks depending on their types, subject area
  • System for automatic notification of the status of requests from users, executors, and managers
  • Determination and implementation of approval rules for areas of responsibility depending on the type of ticket and requested service
  • Experts' working time recording
  • Comprehensive analytical data for planning and optimizing user service processes
  • A complete package of documentation for further support of the Service Desk system

Let's figure out how Helpdesk differs from Service desk

The organization I work for uses a system helpdesk for customer service. On this moment A situation has arisen where this concept is not enough to meet all the requirements put forward for the IT service. In this article we will find out:

  • What is helpdesk and service desk?
  • How do these concepts differ?
  • what to choose for your organization?

By and large, in modern world concepts service desk And helpdesk are almost identical from a business point of view. In practice, namely for the IT service itself, the difference is significant. The point is that

helpdesk - tool

service desk - a set of methods and procedures

Let's find out why this is so:

Helpdesk

If we turn to the direct meaning of this word (its translation), we will see that it means “helping table.” At the same time, in English language helpdesk is an established combination that denotes technical support for a computer park. This turns out to be simple: helpdesk is a technical support service.

Service Desk

Service Desk (also allowed this spelling: servicedesk) – translated means “service section”. That is, the service desk must be considered from the point of view of providing certain services to end users. Service desk is a single point of contact between the service user and the IT specialist providing these services.

The implementation of any system that is based on the helpdesk tool helps to systematize the flow of applications and requests from users, allowing you to plan the work of system administrators and (if there are appropriate regulations) comply SLA. Over time, almost any company comes to the conclusion that this tool organizing work to respond to user requests and resolve problems is becoming obsolete, because There are more and more demands and desires from various company employees (maintaining and fulfilling requests, analysis/monitoring of work, ease of use, overall “performance” of the system, etc.). The next step is the transition from the concept of “helpdesk” to “service desk”, i.e. the implemented one should become a set of tools and various developments to solve the assigned problems. At the same time, the orientation of employees and the system should be aimed at providing “IT as a service”.

One more point is worth noting. Turning to the library ITIL(we'll talk about this separately), let's find out - the concept of support service is called service desk, but not helpdesk . This is because ITIL considers technical service. support, as a division that provides a number of services to end users. What was said above. Each service is clearly regulated, which makes it possible to determine the level of its quality (a document is created SLA for service desk).

Let's summarize. Help desk– a narrower concept, in fact a tool or technical support; Service desk– a broader concept that considers the provision of technical support from the point of view of service, service, as well as the presence of a service quality management (SLM) process and a document that records the level of service quality (SLA).

Service desk - What is this?- our reader will probably ask. Today we will talk about what a help desk is, how to choose it, and how the system we offer can help you.

Those who hear about the automatic application processing system for the first time often ask a question: - service desk- What is this and why is it necessary. Many managers are also interested in how to reduce stress levels among technical support employees and increase their work efficiency. The ideal option would be to automate all incoming applications. In essence, this is the first principle of service desk systems.

Service desk. What is this?

Helpdesksystem significantly facilitates the work of technical customer support employees in any organization providing any services. The main principle of its operation is to provide the ability to automate the processing of customer requests. It's no secret that customers prefer feedback from support agents to their personal email, and the most impatient ones want to receive a reaction directly on the website. This is why most help desks today operate online or provide a web-based user interface. Initially, helpdesks were focused only on managing requests, tickets, incidents coming from clients ("issue tracker"), and today this remains the main task of helpdesks, despite the fact that they perform many other functions. Today's question what's happenedhelpdesk You can answer this way: this is a program that not only automates customer requests, but also ensures communication within companies, stores a database and statistics, and “communicates” with customers instead of technical support operators.

Principles for choosing a Service desk. What does this give the user?

All who have used it say with one voice service deskwhat is thisO software must be chosen wisely and knowledgeably. Eddy developers know firsthand what's happenedhelpdesk- standard (according to the ITIL library) and what requirements for the quality and system characteristics of the product must be met. Therefore, when purchasing an Eddy product, you can be sure that you are relying on reliable and high-quality software. This helpdesksystem will not let you down during busy working hours, will independently prioritize applications, and will save all the necessary statistical data.

How to choose a helpdesk?

Many users are concerned about another issue - not only « service deskWhat is this", but also how to choose it. There are also several unshakable principles for this. For example, a help desk should easily adapt to the company’s needs, integrate with other resources, contain its own database and support Cyrillic encoding. By the way, this can be quite expensive. Many helpdesks, high-quality in their design, “burn out” on the market due to the fact that the Russian text on them is readable in an unknown way, or even not readable at all. This happens because help desks are “Children” of mostly foreign developers. Our product has already been implemented in a huge number of IT systems, and every user is satisfied. Proper organization support departments using Eddy is the first step to success. Therefore, if you are asked - “service desk - what is it?”our brand will be the most complete answer to this question.

In general, the IT direction has always been generous with special terms - too many functions, tasks, systems, each of which must be named and characterized. Some terms become obsolete and are replaced by new ones, while others have been used for several decades. Laptop or laptop, motherboard or system board, helpdesk or service desk - what is the correct name and what do these concepts mean?

The main topic of our blog is the ITSM system, of which ServiceDesk is a part, so today we will try to explain how it differs from Helpdesk.

Is there a need for a difference?

Before we start comparing these two terms, I want to answer this question. We understand that the task of both services is to provide technical support to users, provide them with high quality service and help in solving emerging incidents. For them, it doesn’t matter at all what the name of the IT department service that solves their problems will be, the main thing is that it is always available and provides the required assistance.

The difference is more important for the IT department to characterize the scope of the service's capabilities, its orientation and purpose for the business. Who are your users - employees of the organization or IT clients, do you provide them with assistance or services?

Now a little more detail.

Origin of terms

Both terms have been actively used since the early 2000s, when the development computer technology made a sharp leap and personal computers began to appear en masse in all organizations.

  • Helpdesk

The primary task of IT departments has become their maintenance and provision of technical support to users. Helpdesk has become a point of communication between users and IT department employees, a “single window” through which you can get the help you need.

However, if you look into history, the concept of Helpdesk appeared much earlier, back in the 80s, but in those years there were no users, much less IT clients; help consisted of solving internal problems that did not arise very often.

  • ServiceDesk

The concept of ServiceDesk was the result of the development of Helpdesk and emerged from the ITIL library (its ITSM section), which describes the concept of managing IT as a service.

Here's how ITIL defines ServiceDesk:

“Single point of interaction between service provider and user. The main purpose is to manage incidents and service requests and provide feedback users."


  1. Helpdesk emerged as an IT-oriented service for solving internal problems, and ServiceDesk is a service-oriented service that develops the concept of providing IT as a service to business. Moreover, the services are not only IT services, ServiceDesk can serve as a general service center for receiving and processing requests to the economic, financial or legal service of the organization.
  2. Helpdesk provides assistance to users, and ServiceDesk provides services to them, that is, its purpose is much broader and is closely related to the customer service function. That is why, when talking about ServiceDesk, we can operate with another IT concept - SLA (service level agreement), which may contain a list of requirements for technical support as a service provided.
  3. Helpdesk focuses on resolving incidents (an ITIL term), while ServiceDesk, in addition to resolving incidents, also manages service requests (for new services) and requests for information (answering questions like “how do I do this?”) . Although the Helpdesk service can also perform these additional functions, according to the terminology, this is exactly the distribution of responsibilities.
  4. The Helpdesk service is added to the existing IT infrastructure as separate element, and ServiceDesk is one of the services that IT provides to businesses within the IT-as-a-Service ecosystem. This is why the term ServiceDesk is used in ITIL much more often than Helpdesk
  5. The Helpdesk service is more technical in nature, aimed at solving one specific task, and ServiceDesk is part of the strategic concept of how IT works according to the ITIL methodology. Although no one is stopping a company from using ServiceDesk only to perform Helpdesk functions.
  6. The ServiceDesk service is an evolution of Helpdesk; it took from it the basic principles of providing technical support, but streamlined them: it allowed us to put things in order in registering requests, distributing them into categories and priorities, assigning a contractor, and tracking them at all stages of execution.

Thus, we can conclude that the concept of ServiceDesk is closer to those who understand and accept the recommendations of the ITIL library, while Helpdesk is created as a simple tool for providing technical support, and not separate service. It is possible that the difference between these two concepts is also marketing ploy, it’s not for nothing that there is practically no mention of Helpdesk in ITIL; an IT department seeking to organize technical support according to its practices will build ServiseDesk.

HDI's 2015 annual Help Desk Adoption Study concluded that 41% of helpdesk organizations have a name other than ServiceDesk or Helpdesk, meaning it's not the term that matters, it's the application that matters.


Implementing an IT process management (ITSM) service based on ServiceNow allows you to eliminate the chaos of technical support and organize Helpdesk as a convenient and well-functioning tool. What it will be called is your choice, the main thing is that the result will be a new professional service that will increase efficiency, reduce costs, devote more time to development and modernization, and make the IT system understandable to business.

This is the generalized name of the company’s service department, in other words, the IT department, the technical support department for internal users. Service desk ensures uninterrupted operation of software and hardware and is responsible for the availability of services provided to the business.

Service desk system

This is software that is designed to automate the work of the service department. The main task of a service desk system is to process requests for service or incidents that occurred during the operation of certain systems or services of the company. Tasks of this class software allow you to set the following parameters when creating an application:
  • Service is a service and a set of characteristics that the service desk provides to a business.
  • Service level (SLA) is a set of response and decision metrics, a schedule of business hours during which the service desk provides services to the business.
  • A responsible employee or group is a person or group of people who, as service employees, are responsible for the operation of this service and can perform troubleshooting work or escalate this incident to the required level.
  • An observer is a person or group of people who, as employees of the company, can monitor the progress of a task and give comments or take part in solving the task.
  • An approver is a person who, being an employee of the company, must give his consent to the work, confirm or refute the correctness of a specific request. Typically, the approver is assigned to a service or service.
  • Configuration items are universal objects that can consist of assets, software, hardware, and any other complex objects. KE make it possible to link an incident or request to specific equipment and receive reporting in the context of this equipment.

Often, in most large companies, systems Service desk must be tightly integrated with the Microsoft Active Directory directory service. This allows you to use single authorization in the company’s services and the service desk system. Seamless authorization in any corporate system, based on Active directory accounts, allows you to reduce the time for implementing Service desk systems on large network configurations.



Service desk systems for automating the receipt of requests within the company are installed on internal server capacities and administered by the service department. It is in this configuration that it is convenient to integrate with AD and internal mail services.