Hanyuan Wangzhi Sharing: Why Should IT Departments Establish a Service Desk Role?

Recently, when I was doing an ITSM solution for an enterprise, the old question came up again: is it really necessary to establish a service desk role? Can we do without it? Can job rotation work?

Many IT departments feel they are already short-staffed and overloaded — do they really need a dedicated role just to handle user requests?

Common Doubts About the Service Desk

First, IT departments are already short on manpower. If the service desk is only responsible for receiving user requests but still has to dispatch tickets to others for handling, won\'t it create a bottleneck? Won\'t users be unable to get through, with everything stuck at the service desk?

Moreover, adding a service desk step adds processing time. The worst case is when the downstream handler still needs to communicate with the business user again — that\'s duplicate communication.

So at this point, some say: let\'s just make the entire IT center one big service desk, where everyone can support and everyone can receive requests.

I think there is a gap in understanding here: people only see the service desk as a unified intake responsibility, forgetting that the service desk has other responsibilities.

If the service desk were only a unified intake responsibility, then all the doubts raised above would indeed be valid.

Responsibility 1: Closed Loop of Quality Checks

Without a service desk, no one is responsible for checking the quality of service support work. Because I handled this service request and I recorded it, who checks my work? The answer is no one. Because no one knows this service support work happened.

This also applies to the so-called rotating service desk approach. In a rotating model, today it\'s my turn, tomorrow it\'s someone else\'s — so who checks whether anything was missed? Were all tasks completed? Or were some dropped and overlooked? The answer is no one knows; it only relies on each person\'s sense of responsibility.

Responsibility 2: Knowledge Deposition & Reuse

Let\'s look at the service desk\'s role from the perspective of knowledge deposition. For the knowledge deposition that IT departments often talk about, let\'s think carefully. For example, I\'m responsible for the PP production planning system, while someone else is responsible for the OA system. Because the systems are different, the knowledge has no commonality. The knowledge I deposit about the PP system and the knowledge they deposit about the OA system actually have no reference value for each other. So how can knowledge be reused?

OK, let\'s decide to reuse knowledge within the PP system team. But in reality, if personnel don\'t change frequently, the actual frequency at which this knowledge can be reused is not very high.

But if we shift perspectives: if all personnel can train the service desk on their own role\'s knowledge, then the service desk may significantly improve its first-call resolution rate. As a result, common FAQs and routine technical support work get resolved right at the service desk.

This way, we treat system owners as second-line support and the service desk as first-line support. Second-line staff can focus more on system optimization and project work, while the first-line service desk takes on more user service support.

Responsibility 3: Data Quantification

Third is the role of data. If no one is responsible for unified intake and recording, some people forget to record when busy. Even if they do record, the quality of records is hard to guarantee. The consequence is that we cannot use service desk data to quantify the IT department\'s work, such as:

• How much technical support was provided to which business departments?
• Which business departments have a larger share of technical support — are there small departments with large support volumes?
• Which systems have more errors, and which step takes more time?

Without records, we cannot measure IT work with data. If everyone records, there may be omissions or low-quality invalid records that fail to meet quantification requirements.

Tiered Support System

So when we don\'t treat the service desk as merely unified intake, we can achieve: process-based closure of service desk checks to form a closed loop ensuring overall service quality; knowledge specialization through deposition and reuse to make the service desk professional and improve overall efficiency; and digitalization through the service desk\'s overall data statistics to quantify the IT department\'s work.

This forms the entire IT department into a user-facing tiered support system: first-line service desk, second-line system management, third-line system provision and development. What is the biggest benefit of tiering? It lets people at different tiers in the IT department handle different levels of issues and requests.

Therefore, if we understand the necessity of the service desk from a tiered perspective, what improves is the overall quality and efficiency of the entire IT department.