I follow DailyInfographic to get inspiration for blogging, sharing information with my clients, and also just to see cool infographics. Yesterday’s infographic was about how and why service desks are used around the world.
The study shown there was interesting to me since I interview a lot of HR and Sales customers as part of the win/loss research work I do for my clients who are selling software solutions to these audiences. These two groups are among those that are most likely to use service desks beyond IT support purposes.
Service Desks have traditionally been defined as:
– a service providing information and support to computer users, especially within a company
Things have changed as other departments have seen a model that works to help THEM disseminate information, respond to inquiries, etc. to employees.
The three most popular ways to get service outside of IT (and examples of how they use service desks):
| HR | Finance | Sales |
| New employee onboarding | Accounting | Account Information |
| Benefits | Procurement | Competitive Intelligence |
| Relocation | Payroll | Customer Feedback |
Very interesting stuff, especially in the Sales area…I recently found out about a great tool, Compelligence, that can help dole out competitive intelligence to salespeople on an as needed basis. It could be considered a ‘help desk’ type of tool…I was very impressed and actually played with it a bit to see whether the competitive information I had gathered via a client’s recent customer satisfaction survey would be enough to provide robust information to the Sales team. It was quite impressive and my client is very interested in bringing this tool onboard particularly to help new salespeople have the information they need at their fingertips when facing specific competitors.
Many software companies are vying for a position to help power service desks in organizations, including Oracle, of course. I just signed up for Oracle CloudWorld which is promoting a track on ‘Modernizing Your Customer & Employee Experiences’. That should shed even more light on the new ways that service desks are being used.
This shift makes a lot of sense based on the huge amount of information that employees rely upon to navigate their jobs and their organizations. How many manuals, binders, databases, etc. can you keep track of on your own?
Have you had any personal experience with service desks beyond needing IT support? I’m wondering whether it’s an effective way to get information and the help you need or yet just one more impersonal experience…do tell!