When recruiting service desk staff, which capability set should be prioritised?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 7. Seven ITIL practices in detail medium
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The options
Not correct Statistical analysis skills for identifying trends in service performance data
Wrong. Analysis of trends supports continual improvement and problem management. Useful adjacent skills, but not what the desk role is primarily built on.
Not correct Deep specialist technical expertise in every technology the organisation runs
Wrong. Desk staff need practical technical understanding, but deep specialism sits with support teams. Hiring for depth alone tends to produce a desk that diagnoses well and communicates badly.
Not correct Contract and commercial negotiation skills for dealing with suppliers
Wrong. That capability belongs with supplier management. The desk may raise supplier-related issues, but it does not negotiate the relationships.
Correct Empathy, communication and emotional intelligence, combined with understanding of the business the users work in
Correct. ITIL emphasises excellent customer service skills and business understanding, because the desk's job is to understand and reassure the user as much as to record the ticket.
Why
The service desk is where most users form their impression of the service provider, so its staff are selected for customer-facing capability: empathy, incident analysis and prioritisation, effective communication, emotional intelligence, and enough business awareness to understand what the user's problem is actually costing them. Deep technical specialism is the province of the support teams the desk escalates to.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 7
- What it says
- Service desk staff need excellent customer service skills — empathy, communication, emotional intelligence — and business understanding rather than deep technical specialism.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 7 and space the ones you get wrong.