What Are Service Desk Lines of Support?

Sept. 28, 2011 - PRLog -- Choosing an IT outsourcing firm to provide specialist IT support such as an IT service desk function is proven to deliver significant business advantages from both an economical and procedural perspective. One of the most accessible and most commonly used forms of IT support is an IT service desk, a single point of contact tasked with resolving client IT incidents or escalating issues where an immediate resolution is not possible.
Service desks are often used as an indicator of a particular organization’s IT health. They can be used strategically as a cost saving measure by reducing the need for an internal IT support team and can also increase operational efficiency by reducing employee downtime caused by systems failure.
An IT service desk is defined by the Service Desk Institute (SDI) as one that is able to resolve 60% of incidents without escalation while reducing the cost and downtime to the client company suffering IT issues.
The architecture of a service desk comprises of a number of lines of support, beginning at the first line and continuing through to the third line of support.
The first line of support is as the name suggests the first port of call when an incident arises. The first line of support team will attempt to resolve the incident within any agreed time frames for first line resolution. If this time frame is exceeded, the incident will be escalated to the second line of support.
The second line of support will deal with incidents requiring a deeper technical knowledge or larger time frame for resolution. Upon receipt of an escalated incident, the second line of support becomes responsible for managing the incident and providing client level updates as to progress. In the event that even greater technical knowledge is required, the second line may escalate to the third line.
Third line support may include assistance from third party suppliers such as the software developers themselves or the hardware manufacturer.
At all stages in the incident management and resolution, a robust and transparent reporting structure should be in place, this allows for further problem management to take place such as analysis of incident trends and identification of appropriate preventative steps.
When choosing an IT service desk, resolution times and escalation levels may provide some insight into the efficiency of the service. The Internet Group, a London IT service desk provider, maintains a three star SDI accreditation and resolves over 22% of incidents via its proactive monitoring platform. Incidents are typically responded to in an average of just 12 minutes.
To find out more, visit http://www.theinternetgroup.com