Service Desk Articles

Knowledge Base Solutions

Comparing Internal Versus External Knowledge Base Solutions

This article aims to provide an overview of the different types of knowledge bases available. The question we want to answer here is: “Is it better for your company to use an internal knowledge base (that’s built into your ITSM tool) or an external knowledge base provided by a third party?”
Duration Reports

Improve IT Service Desk Customer Experience with Duration Reports

If you’re not meeting the response time agreements you have with your customers can you explain why? If not, then here’s a potential solution – duration distribution reporting is a strategy that service managers can use to gain a deeper understanding of the lifecycle of a request in your organization. Here we explore…
Adopting ITIL

Adopting ITIL: The Process Edition

We must stop treating the processes in ITIL as discrete units, where “paint-by-numbers” is a viable approach, says Kaimar Karu. Remember: it’s not about processes, it’s about value and services, and the “how” of every process or concept matters only when the “why” is first successfully addressed.
Change Notifications vs. Change Approvals

Change Management Process: Notifications vs. Change Approvals

Change management processes and procedures should be created from the ground up, with scalability, standardization, risk mitigation, and efficiency all at the core. But when defining your process, how do you know when a change notification is sufficient and when an approval is required for a change?
Multiple Personalities on the IT Service Desk

3 Tips for Managing Multiple Personalities on the IT Service Desk

One of the most important aspects of being an IT Service Desk Manager is understanding the personalities of your team members. After all, if you don’t know what makes them tick, what motivates them, or what’s important to them, then how can you effectively manage them?
Service desk profit center

How to Make Your Help Desk a Service Desk Profit Center

How can you move your help desk from being a cost center to a profit center, aligning it with the business outcomes that C-level execs value most highly? Let’s see…
ITSM Knowledge Management Tips

14 Tips for ITSM Knowledge Management Success

This article discusses a variety of common barriers to knowledge management success – from getting started to day-to-day operational challenges; and offers up a variety of advice to get your knowledge management journey right, exploit existing knowledge, and avoid common “people” issues.
Celebrating knowledge management success

Knowledge Management – the Current ITSM Success Levels

What is the current take up of knowledge management across the globe, how does it differ by location, and what does this research indicate about ITSM and knowledge management in general? This article explores.
ISO 20000

ISO 20000: When Are We Going to Stop Lying to Ourselves? No One is Going to Do All of ITIL

This article looks at how the ISO 20000 international standard for ITSM can help organizations to make the most of ITIL best practice or any other approach. Read on to find out more.
Selfless service

Selfless Service — A New Mindset to Customer Service

We’re all familiar with ITSM and self-service, but are we doing it all wrong? This article looks at something called “selfless service” and how to makes the customer journey so much easier to deliver a better customer experience.
IT Service Desk

The Current Status and Perspectives of the IT Service Desk

This article looks at the work taking place at the University of Oviedo, to understand the current situation and possibilities for improving the IT service desk function within IT service teams, and to identify opportunities for service management improvement.
ITIL Knowledge Management Benefits

ITIL Knowledge Management for the IT Service Desk

Knowledge management as a corporate capability is nothing new, but still too few organizations are realizing its value (or doing it badly). Here we look at 18 benefits of knowledge exploitation from the perspective of business outcomes, operations, people, and customers.
Measuring the value of service desk

How to Measure Service Desk Value

In this article, Aale Roos shares practical examples of how to best measure IT service desk value – and it doesn’t involve activity metrics such as availability and/or MTTR.
Tips for AI and automation

10 Automation and AI Tips for Working Smarter on the IT Service Desk

Here Stephen Mann looks not only at the benefits of Automation and AI to the service desk, but shares examples of what activities you should be automating and how to prepare for Artificial Intelligence on the service desk.
The Avengers as service desk agents

5 Tips for IT Service Desk Agent Recruitment from The Avengers

Inspired by the new Avengers: Infinity War movie, imagine if Nick Fury needed to recruit a new team of IT Service Desk Agents for S.H.I.E.L.D – here’s 5 Avengers-inspired traits that should be must haves on his (and any IT service desks) skills-requirements list.