52 Examples of Help Desk

John Spacey, January 18, 2023

Help desk is a service that supports technology environments including acting as the first line of technical support for incidents and single point of contact for end-users. This can involve support for all the foundational IT services of an organization including devices, networks, desktops, systems, applications and computing infrastructure. Help desk acts as the first point of contact and can escalate issues to second line support teams as appropriate. The following are common examples of help desk functions.

Access Requests e.g. setting up new users	Application Testing
Automate Maintenance	Automate Monitoring & Escalation
Availability Management	Backup & Restore
Build & Maintain a Service Knowledge Base	Business Continuity Management
Call Logging	Capacity Management
Change Control	Customer / Client Service e.g. one-to-one via phone, email, messaging
Customer Satisfaction Surveys / Monitoring	Decommission IT Assets
Enforcing Policy & Procedures	Escalation to Second Line Support (Tier 2)
Establishing & Improving Help Desk Scripts and Workflows	First Line Technical Support (Tier 1)
Hardware Reuse & Recycling	Help Desk Reporting
IT Asset Management	IT Procurement
Identifying Defects	Implementing Change Requests e.g. firewall rules
Incident Management	Information Security Upgrades & Patches
Internal Controls e.g. approvals for access requests	Inventory Tracking
License Management	Maintain & Follow Standard Operating Procedures
Maintenance Planning & Schedules	Monitoring System Logs / Alerts
Network Monitoring & Support	Problem Management
Problem Resolution Scripts	Root Cause Analysis
SLA Management	Security Checks
Standards Documentation	Support IT Audits
Support IT Devices	System Administration
System Maintenance	Technical Support for Events
Technology Evaluation & Selection	Technology Maintenance & Repair
Ticket Management	User Guidance e.g. showing user how to submit change request
User Inquires	User Support
User Training	Vendor Management