ITIL Service Desk Process Flow: Efficient Incident Management!

Before diving into the ITIL Service Desk process flow, let’s take a moment to revisit what ITIL is. Originally developed by the British government in the 1980s, ITIL—short for Information Technology Infrastructure Library—was created to document best practices, case studies, and guidelines for IT service management. Its success was so significant that ITIL quickly became a globally recognized standard for managing IT services effectively.

Enjoy importing this fully editable ITIL Service Desk process flow—available for free in your HEFLO account! Use it as a guide with your team to review and analyze each step of the workflow, helping improve understanding and streamline your support operations.

ITIL Service Desk process flow: Workflow in detail!

The Service Desk Management Process is a workflow designed to record and track all incidents in Information Technology and is very similar to the ITIL library.

In short, calls are forwarded to the first level of support. There a respondent attempts to find a resolution through knowledge and accumulated experience database.

If this level can not solve the incident, the call is directed to the second level, where a specialist is responsible for finding a solution. The first level should return to receive the call to validate the procedure adopted.

Finally, the user gives validation to the solution, and the call ends.

Take a look at the full ITIL Service Desk Management Process:

ITIL Service Desk process flow

The ITIL Service Desk process flow is divided into 3 lanes in a pool:

1. User: The person who calls the related IT service.
2. Support Level 1: This is for basic and simple solutions and is the first point of contact with the user.
3. Support Level 2: An analyst specializing in IT that should keep an up to date knowledge base for any query from the first level. This is the person who solves cases with the highest level of complexity.

Let us now examine each stage of the ITIL Service Desk process flow:

• The user reports a problem and brings all the necessary information so that the Level 1 technician can best direct the call.
• The first level technician analyzes all information submitted by the user and searches the knowledge base for the best solution to the problem.
• If they can not resolve the issue, the first level technical requests help from the second-level analyst.

• The second-level analyst studies the request and returns the solution. If they find it necessary, the solution is documented in the knowledge base so that the next similar occurrence the first level can resolve the issue without contacting the second level.
• Technical Level 1 confirms the user’s problem will be solved with this solution. If not resolved, returns to the level 2 analyst. If so, the level 1 sends a confirmation to the user.
• The user makes a test solution and checks if it works. If it is not suitable, it returns to the Service Desk, which takes over the process. If it is, the process ends.

If the issue cannot be resolved, first-level support escalates the request to a second-level analyst. The goal, however, is to reduce the number of escalations over time. This is achieved by capturing the knowledge and solutions developed by second-level analysts in a shared knowledge base, which first-level technicians can easily reference. As a result, the need for escalation decreases, support becomes more agile, and first-level technicians—who are in direct contact with users—are empowered to resolve more issues independently.

Adapting the flow to the reality of your business

Of course, every company has its own particularities. In some cases, more complex solutions—such as a high-value hardware replacement—may require approval from a higher decision level or even a different department. When this happens, it's necessary to add another lane to the workflow or possibly create a separate pool with connectors to departments like Finance. The process can become even more complex if product acquisition is involved, in which case an additional pool representing the Purchasing department may be needed to handle that part of the workflow.

👉 Now access your own ITIL Service Desk process flow (just create a free account).

Finally, by creating your free account on HEFLO, you’ll also gain access to many other example process diagrams such as ITIL Change Management and HR diagrams.