4. THE SERVICE DESK

This diverse chapter will concentrate on the IT Service Desk, and its function and position within the organisation. The advice, procedures, processes and guidelines described in this chapter are by no means definitive and may not apply to every type of organisational structure.

The chapter is broken down into the following sections:

• Overview
• Implementing your Service Desk infrastructure
• Service Desk technologies
• Service Desk responsibilities, functions, staffing levels etc
• Service Desk staffing skill set
• Setting up your Service Desk environment
• Service Desk education and training
• Service Desk processes and procedures
• Incident reporting and review
• Conclusion.

You will see that the structure of this chapter is different from that of the remainder of the book. Unlike the other disciplines, which are processes, the Service Desk is a function - a function that is crucial to the whole concept of Service Management. That is why the Service Desk is presented first in this book. The Service Desk is the point of contact between the customer and the service, and is responsible for the Incident Control provided by Incident Management. The chapter on Incident Management (Chapter 5) underpins the technical details mentioned in this chapter.