Service Desk or Help Desk? This is the Software Your IT Really Needs

1. What is a servicedesk?
2. What is a helpdesk?
3. What are the differences between servicedesk and helpdesk?
4. How to make the choice between servicedesk and helpdesk
5. How you can set up a service or helpdesk
6. The right helpdesk tool for every IT department
7. The next step on your IT journey

The demands on your company's IT department are increasing due to the increased remote work with additional devices and the rising requirements of employees and customers. To master these challenges successfully and ensure a smooth process, a consistent and efficient organization of the IT services is necessary.

Such an organization can take the form of a helpdesk or a servicedesk software . We will present the differences and respective advantages for your company, your department and your customers in detail in this article.

What is a servicedesk?

A servicedesk is referred to as the Single Point of Contact , i.e., the central contact point, between you as IT service providers and your users. The approach of a servicedesk is characterized by being very comprehensive and strategic. Its main tasks include service requests, proactive recommendations for improving services and processes, automations, knowledge documentation, and communication with users. This primary interface makes it easier for you to interact with your users. This way, you gain valuable insights into their needs and ideas for collaborating with your company. However, your IT servicedesk not only focuses on individual users but also on your general business needs and achieving your company goals. With the multitude of requests and tasks that reach you via your servicedesk software, you can identify patterns and problem trends early and counteract as needed. Thus, a servicedesk also acts as an early warning system, which can prevent negative impacts due to potential IT failures.

What is a helpdesk?

A helpdesk could be seen as an IT fire service - it tactically and quickly resolves the problems of end users. This could include resetting a password or configuring a new device . You centrally manage the requests from colleagues and customers that have come in via the ticketing system according to your set standards. With a helpdesk, you monitor basic IT requests, support your users with service requests, and manage your company's devices. The task management within such software always gives you an overview of your resources and the performance data of your technical aids. This transparency enables you to make quick and informed decisions in case of problems that occur within your IT environment, which in turn allows you to use your time and resources more efficiently. At the same time, you can ensure the IT security of your devices as you always have an overview of the current requirement level.

What are the differences between servicedesk and helpdesk?

Both a servicedesk and a helpdesk support your IT in their daily work. The helpdesk takes care of quickly processing problems that customers or employees have with their devices and programs to enable them to use them smoothly. Thus, it rather focuses on short-term needs and goals. In contrast, a servicedesk aims to provide all users with excellent overall service, which includes proactive improvements that fit your business goals and prioritize them in a timely manner. It, therefore, keeps an eye on the overall strategy and covers all your company's IT services. While a servicedesk can include all the functions of a helpdesk, it goes beyond it due to the strategic orientation.

How to make the choice between servicedesk and helpdesk

Which tool variant is the right choice for your company? You can draw the comparison of servicedesk versus helpdesk based on various features.

• Company size: Very small companies usually make the right choice with a helpdesk tool, as a servicedesk tool often offers more than they can use. In such a case, you would pay for software and resources that you do not need. On the other hand, we would recommend large companies to go for a servicedesk solution in order to better trace their strategic IT approaches.
• Basic requirements: What is important to you? What functionalities must the system definitely bring along? Divide these features into must-have and nice to have in order to give you a better overview. If it is important to you, for example, that you can process service requests and identify trends, this speaks for a servicedesk.
• Ease of use: Be sure to involve your IT colleagues in the selection, after all, they are the ones who will be working with the new software every day. To use all components as effectively as possible, it may be advisable not to choose too complex software and to start with a helpdesk first.
• Support: Even if you are the experts - the day will come when you will need support from your software provider. Therefore, consider to what extent this is included, whether you get regular updates and whether any other regulatory requirements need to be considered.

How you can set up a service or helpdesk

Once you have made the decision for a tool, it is about getting this into implementation and integrating it into everyday company life to satisfactorily and quickly process requests from colleagues and customers. We will show you how this can work successfully in the following section using the helpdesk tool from NinjaOne.

Step 1: Specific helpdesk software

To make the helpdesk tool become a functioning part of your business success, you should use software that has been specifically developed for helpdesks. Ninja Ticketing is easy to install and easy to use, so both the requestors and the processors will quickly find their way around and can focus on solving the technical challenges - without having to invest much time in learning the new software requirements.

Step 2: Documentation

Document important tips and tricks directly in NinjaOne and continuously update them to ensure a uniform level of knowledge within the helpdesk team. This way, many concerns can usually be handled at a low support level.

Step 3: Service agreement

Before you get started with the new helpdesk, you should set the frameworks for your work. In a service agreement, you contractually fix how quickly customers and colleagues can expect their concerns to be processed, which requests are processed, and which criteria you use to measure the performance of the NinjaOne helpdesk. This documentation helps avoid potential misunderstanding and helps set the right expectations for your IT department.

Step 4: Automation

Next, you automate your ticketing and the associated processes. Based on the respective knowledge of the IT staff, NinjaOne assigns the corresponding tickets to your colleagues. The helpdesk frees you from deciding who to put a new ticket in, thus allowing you to use your resources better. Also, NinjaOne can automatically create a ticket when it identifies that multiple tickets with the same solution have been documented. With the creation of a specific ticket, you can specifically address this problem and create a company-wide solution, which will save you future requests of this kind.

Step 5: Create context

In order to understand a problem and resolve a ticket quickly, it is important to understand its context. Problem descriptions like "My computer is not working as it should" bring additional work as you first have to invest time to have the problem described to you. Therefore, train your colleagues and customers to clearly present the context of their inquiries in NinjaOne, so that you can resolve their problems as quickly as possible. In addition, an IT-Asset-Management-Software ensures improved visibility over all resources, their performance data, their functionality and the state of the assets, resulting in better transparency and an expanded context.

Step 6: Communication

It is important that you communicate clearly with your users. Listen actively to them when they describe their concerns to you, give them feedback, and regularly train them on the latest IT topics - often problems then solve themselves. You can also document this knowledge in the form of FAQs, so that your colleagues and customers can first try to solve their problems themselves.

Step 7: Reporting

In order to keep an overview of how effective the use of your helpdesk is, you should regularly document (daily, weekly or monthly) the key figures that are important to your company and discuss them. They help you to classify your performance in comparison to previous periods and to identify frequently occurring problems quicker. You can automate the reporting to conserve your resources. The most important helpdesk metrics that NinjaOne can provide you with include the speed of your first response to the ticket, the number of solved tickets, the total time you need to resolve a ticket as well as the size of the backlog of unprocessed tasks and the customer satisfaction rates.

Step 8: Continuous improvement

Improve your processes continuously so that your users notice that you take their concerns to heart. This simultaneously has a positive effect on the efficiency of your company.

The right helpdesk tool for every IT department

To find the right helpdesk or servicedesk tool for your company, you first have to determine which functions this should bring along.

It makes sense that your helpdesk can establish a remote connection via TeamViewer or Splashtop with various devices in order to assist colleagues and customers who are not based at your company location. Furthermore, it should have a possibility for automating worksteps and allow synchronization of different devices to ensure your IT security. In addition, it can be helpful for you if you can manage and renew the device warranties in your helpdesk. Customization within the helpdesk allows you to tailor your IT environment exactly to your team and meet its requirements. Moreover, the function of ticket tracking and prioritization should not be underestimated, as through this you can better organize your workflows and communicate more reliably.

To give you a comprehensive overview of the best helpdesk softwares and remote monitoring softwares , we have put them together on OMR Reviews. The industry leader NinjaOne is designed to continuously improve your user experiences with Ninja Ticketing through the maximum degree of automation and intuitive user guidance. You can also run all important functions directly from the ticket, thus achieving solutions in the shortest possible time.

Simply convince yourself of NinjaOne, by reading the experience reports of our OMR-Reviews users.

The features of Ninja Ticketing at a glance:

• unlimited customizable ticketing forms
• fully verifiable inline activity log
• WYSIWYG response editor
• private and public response options
• easy-to-handle time recording

Overview of all ticketing forms of the helpdesk software Ninja Ticketing.

The next step on your IT journey

Installing a servicedesk or helpdesk can bring you significant time savings and personnel relief. Based on the collected user problems and your knowledge of the management and use of your IT resources, you will find various points in no time that will increase the user experiences for your customers and colleagues to a whole new level. An IT management software like NinjaOne supports you with efficient and cost-saving processes. As a unified IT management platform, NinjaOne replaces individual solutions, bringing together RMM, endpoint management, patch management, backup, helpdesk, remote access, IT documentation, software distribution and IT asset management into one single tool.