Service Desk (ITIL 4)

Someone recently said that they did not understand the reason or value in ITIL 4 defining the service desk as a “Practice” and not a team/function as did in ITIL 3.

I believe referring to the service desk as a team/function (as did ITIL 3) unintentionally created a culture where today we see some service desk teams failing to keep up with modern times, they have become old school, and struggling to demonstrate value contribution.

Let me explain; if we go back to the day (ITIL 3) where there was no such practice/role as the “service desk”, e.g., only as a team/function, then as we knew, the primary focus for service desk agents was just incident management and service request management (as practices/roles).  Meaning, to get broken things fixed and fulfil service requests. Unfortunately, in modern-day this is indeed old school. Think about it, today, with the introduction of automation, techniques such as shift left, swarming and not to mention, the reduction of technical debt, this is removing the value of the service desk as we knew it.

So, what is missing? What about understanding patterns of business activities (PBAs), and business processes? What about contextual, emotional, and disobedient intelligence? What about service empathy and adopting a service dominant logic? What about triage? What about communication and communication channels/models?

This is the issue, ITIL 3 offered no such practice/role that focusses on these however, today we have ITIL 4 which does, the practice “service desk.”  The only potential confusion is with those organisations who continue to label the function/team as the service desk, e.g., these organisations find their service desk agents responsible for a practice/role with the same label as the team (“service desk”). Whereas as those organisations who refer to such a team as the service centre don't have this confusion. This doesn’t mean to say that we should change the team label, that’s another topic.

So, in summary, in this modern world the aforementioned missing qualities and attributes are essential, simply put, the service desk is no longer just about getting broken things fixed (this is old school). Today, the service desk or service centre agents focus on the “service desk” as a practice/role as well as incident management and service request management, therefore, equally focus on the business in the wider sense.

Some agents, however, still have that old school mentality, they translate the label "service desk" as place where one serves their technical apprenticeship, with the aim of becoming a future technical specialist. In the context of the service desk/centre, that thinking is not only old school, but some organisations in the future won't want technical specialists in-house, they will want professional business workers (service managers). In other words, If I were a service consumer, when I contact the service desk/centre, I expect the agent in the practice/ role “service desk,” to be able to put things into business context, I expect the agent to win my trust, I expect the agent to know more about me than I do myself, I expect the agent to engender confidence! These aspects present a 'moment of truth' e.g., an episode where the consumer get's an impression, good or bad.

I hope I have separated and defined the service desk as a practice, and the importance of doing so, I hope I have made this topic thought provoking.