Help Desk, Service Deck, Call Center ... You say tomato , I say... (well you get it)

[#1]

Over the past few months, there has been more adoption of the naming conventions for the help desk. Whether you refer to the help desk as the service desk (because the agents take service incidents) or call center because the agents accept both internal and external calls, the infrastructure and mission remains the same-  supporting the caller.

This is the first of a few postings regarding the help desk in client lifecycle management.

As always, the opinions expressed on this blog are mine and do not represent those of my employer.

Sometimes a name change is good, and of course some times it is not. The end users, based upon my experience, still refer to the help desk as the help desk and not other names, the question perhaps is why?

In our new world focused upon the end users, and not necessarily IT, the end users when they require support need help, hence I believe the reliance on the help desk nomenclature. The rationale for the name change expresses IT desire to broaden our focus, not the end users lack of requirement for help.

It may seem to some reading this that this may be splitting hairs a bit, but it may not be in the sense that end users are always wary of name changes without a change in the day to day interaction. In other words, if I call the same number, speak to the same agents (or combination thereof) , and secure the support that I received before, why do I need to refer to the organization as something different?

To IT it signifies that we offer perhaps more and diverse services, however, I would submit that until the end user requires that particular service, then the name change is just that - a name change. Longtime Speaker Tip O'Neill said that "all politics are local", I would submit that all help desk is local as well. Changing the name may or may not be relevant if there is not a deeper and more focused benefit to the end user(s) on an immediate basis.

Many of the end users we support have endured many reorganizations, unique names of organizations, and so on, do we really need to create a new identity for the help desk? In many organizations, the statistics of the help desk are well over 90% satisfaction levels, I offer this as an example. Based upon this, why merely change the name?

I would very much like to hear your thoughts and comments regarding this phenomenon.

When I was in school I once asked a teacher to call me by my middle name (I really liked it better at the time), the teachers response was "you still look like Bruce to me".

So it is with help desk... stay tuned for more detailed analysis and commentary on this particular aspect of lifecycle management.

[#2]

  Fantastic piece of  <a href="http://www.123employee.com">outsourcing information</a>. Thanks! Otis Christianson