Service Desk within the ITIL framework

Service Operation is one of five core publications from ITIL that covers the service lifecycle. The purpose of service operation is to deliver agreed-on levels of service to users and customers, and to manage the applications, technology, and infrastructure that support delivery of the services.

The service desk is a key function of service operation. It provides a single, central point of contact for all users of IT. Service desk staff execute the incident management and request fulfillment processes to restore normal service to users as quickly as possible. Restoring normal service could involve fixing a technical fault, fulfilling a service request, or answering a query — whatever is needed to enable users to return to their work. The service desk logs and manages customer interactions and provides an interface to other service operation processes and activities.

ITIL 2011 notes these specific responsibilities of a service desk:

• Logging, categorizing, and prioritizing all calls
• Providing first-line investigation and problem diagnosis
• Resolving incidents or service requests when first contacted or whenever possible
• Escalating incidents and service requests that cannot be resolved within agreed-on time limits
• Closing resolved incidents, requests, and other calls
• Communicating with users to keep them informed of progress, impending changes, agreed-on outages, and other such notifications