The Service Desk is an IT function (not a process) that is responsible for providing initial responses to any user issue, including an incident, service request, or request for information.  All contacts that come into the Service Desk are initially called a service request.  After processing by the Request Fulfillment process, a service request may turn out to be one of the following:

• change request
• incident
• request for information
• standard change

This function is a single point of contact for users to contact the IT function.  Although the service desk may be geographically distributed, it is a virtual single point of contact.  That is, all users should be able to contact the service desk via the same interface, regardless of location. 

The Service Desk function is primarily responsible for carrying out the following processes:

• Request Fulfillment
• Incident Management
• Problem Management