Desktop Support vs. Help Desk
Help desk and desktop support are two services that businesses rely on to provide answers to some of the most common product and service questions. They’re meant to help customers and employees solve problems faster and more efficiently. While the two terms are often used interchangeably, they are contextually different and serve different purposes.
Help desks and IT desktop support are two essential business services that ensure the smooth operation of businesses. Understand the fundamental differences between these two concepts, how they complement each other and tips for choosing the right way for supporting your customers and employees.
What Is Help Desk Support?
Help desks are central contact points where employees and customers seek answers to general questions. These questions often relate to user errors, company information, network issues, exchanges and returns. Help desks may be set up as physical locations or virtual services such as telephone helplines or online chatbots.
They’re often the first line of defense for IT support, where a team provides information or technical help. The incidents are logged, managed or resolved. When the issues are too complex, the help desk IT support team escalates them to other departments with the expertise to handle them. Typically, employees need a help desk to help them access new systems or troubleshoot equipment.
The main functions of IT help desks can be broken down into:
- Offering a single point of contact for external and internal support
- Providing answers to frequently asked questions
- Gathering customer feedback and measuring the level of customer satisfaction
- Ensuring fast and simple resolution of common setup and usage errors
Benefits of Help Desks
Help desks provide businesses with numerous benefits, the main ones include:
- Streamlined workflows: Help desks follow a defined conflict resolution process involving ticketing, categorization, management and escalation.
- Improved customer satisfaction: They ensure more efficient and effective customer support, leaving them satisfied and well taken care of.
- Enhanced scalability: Help desks allow companies to gather feedback they can use to scale their business — the best help desk providers can help you scale your support growth.
- Increased productivity: Help desks offer automated responses, ensuring efficient problem resolution, eliminating redundancies and supporting cross-team collaboration.
What Is Desktop Support?
Desktop support refers to on-site technical IT support for front-end computer users. Technicians offer the service and troubleshoot common customer issues, such as lagging software, crashed hardware or desktop systems. They also resolve printing, system maintenance, managing upgrades, computer repair, software installation or troubleshooting and word processing issues.
Desktop support is reserved for fixing hardware in designated areas or inside an organization. It follows a break-and-fix mode, so the services are only offered as and when end users and customers request them. Desktop support technicians may offer some help desk support services to an organization’s IT team members.
Here’s a breakdown of desktop support functions:
- Fixing problems on laptop and desktop systems
- Remote troubleshooting of software issues
- Optimizing workstation performance and maintaining workstation functionality
- Resolving technical or complex help desk requests
Benefits of IT Desktop Support
Offering employees and end-users an IT support desktop has numerous benefits for businesses. These include:
- Efficient disaster recovery: The desktop support team ensures fast disaster recovery by being on-site to resolve issues.
- Reduce business downtime: The desktop support team’s technicians have the expertise and experience to resolve technical hardware and software issues quickly to ensure business continuity.
- Enhance efficiency: Having on-site technical support means complex problems are resolved quickly to streamline workflows and improve business performance, efficiency and productivity.
Side-by-Side Comparison of Help Desk and Desktop Support
Help desks and desktop support have some distinct differences. One of the main differences is that the help desk is customer-centric and focuses on offering answers to customers and employees. On the other hand, desktop support emphasizes service delivery and technical problem resolution.
The following are some of the other ways help desks and desktop support services differ:
- Scope of services: Help desks have a more general scope that includes answering general questions, providing basic technical assistance and escalating complex technical issues to desk support or other more capable departments. Desktop support focuses on fixing or troubleshooting complex hardware, software and computer system issues.
- Availability: IT help desk support needs to be available around the clock to ensure customer satisfaction and convenience. Desktop support is available on a need basis and for users in designated support areas because it requires the presence of a well-trained desktop support technician.
- Level of expertise: Help desk technicians are less specialized because they offer more general assistance than desktop support agents, who must possess specific skills to offer technical guidance and support.
- Type of people served: Help desks offer support to end users and employees looking for quick and fast solutions to common problems. Desktop support is often reserved for employees looking for practical solutions to technical issues.
Which One Is Right for Your Business?
While it may be tempting to pick one over the other, it’s incredibly beneficial for businesses to leverage help desk and desktop IT support. Leveraging both ensures the effective resolution of customer and employee issues at all levels. It may involve using a help desk to resolve issues remotely and desktop support for on-site problem resolution.
Help desk support offers tier-one support, and desktop support offers tier-two support. This spares desktop support technicians the time and effort they’d spend providing solutions to common problems and requests. Merging these two services enhances performance while minimizing downtime and enhancing overall company productivity.
Why Outsource Desktop Support and Help Desk Services?
Running two separate desktop and help desk support teams can be expensive and challenging, especially for small business enterprises. However, outsourcing to a professional IT-managed service provider is a cost-effective method of leveraging both advantages. Here are more advantages of outsourcing desktop support and help desk services.
- Round-the-clock services: Managed IT service providers offer ongoing hardware, software and computer system monitoring to ensure consistent optimal performance and uptime.
- Increased flexibility: Outsourced teams offer more flexibility and scalability than in-house teams to meet the needs of your customers and employees as your business grows and changes.
- Faster response times: Most managed IT service providers offer 24/7/365 support to ensure minimal downtime by supporting customers and employees whenever and wherever.
Leverage Kirbtech’s Managed IT Services
Kirbtech is a professional IT management company that focuses on helping small and medium-sized enterprises manage their technical IT needs. We offer custom solutions based on your company’s needs and services. Our IT-managed services include helpdesk support, active monitoring and data backup solutions.
Schedule a free consultation to have us assess your business needs and customize an IT management plan.
