Service Desk Lead
Service Desk Lead
The Service Desk Lead is accountable for the day-to-day delivery of the Service Desk and onsite support services provided to an assigned customer. Acting as both a hands-on service lead and the senior escalation point, the role is responsible for ensuring that customer issues are resolved efficiently, communication is proactive and clear, and service quality consistently meets or exceeds agreed standards. You will be the operational owner of the service, you will develop a detailed understanding of the customer environment, user community, support trends and operational risks, ensuring that the service remains responsive to customer needs and delivers a consistently positive support experience.
You will report to the Service Account Manager and leading a team of Service Desk Analysts, Site Engineers and the wider support ecosystem, the role combines people leadership, technical credibility and operational control. Customer experience sits at the centre of the role.
Core Responsibilities
- Lead the dedicated customer Service Desk team, setting priorities and allocating work.
- Ensure all incidents, requests and access requests are logged, categorised, prioritised, progressed and communicated accurately in ServiceNow.
- Maintain end-to-end ticket ownership and user communication through resolution, including disciplined handoffs to the customer teams, third parties and other resolver groups.
- Monitor queues, ageing, breaches, reopen rates, contact demand and first-contact resolution, intervening before performance or user experience deteriorates.
- Lead major incident coordination for the service, establishing control, stakeholder communications, chronology, actions and shift handovers.
- Actively develop knowledge, standard operating procedures, FAQs and “shift left” opportunities, improving consistency and resolution at the most efficient level.
- Coach analysts through quality reviews, call and ticket observation, feedback, training and customer specific accreditation.
- Coordinate Site Engineers and the shared technical SME bench, ensuring onsite activity and escalations remain visible and auditable.
- Maintain readiness for out-of-hours, occurrences of severe weather, surge and emergency support through the wider onshore 24x7 operation.
Essential Requirements
- Experience leading a Service Desk or multi-channel technical support team in an MSP or enterprise environment.
- Strong working knowledge of incident, request, access, knowledge and major incident practices.
- Confident use of ITSM tooling, preferably ServiceNow, including queues, workflow, reporting and data quality.
- Proven ability to coach analysts, improve quality and create an accountable customer service culture.
- Ability to coordinate technical teams and suppliers while maintaining clear user ownership.
- Strong written and verbal communication, including customer and major incident updates.
- Demonstrable experience acting as a senior technical escalation point within a Service Desk, EUC or managed services environment.
- Broad technical understanding of Microsoft 365, Windows endpoints, endpoint management, identity, client applications and workplace connectivity.
- Ability to direct technical investigations, assess evidence, challenge assumptions and coordinate engineers and 3rd party specialists during service restoration.
- Some travel to client sites will be required.
Desirable Requirements
- Experience supporting VIPs, regulated customers or operationally critical environments.
- Experience of 24x7, on-call or emergency support models.
- ITIL certification and experience of knowledge centred service or “shift left” programmes.
Leadership Behaviours
- Acts with clear ownership and follows issues through to an agreed outcome.
- Communicates directly, calmly and credibly with customers, colleagues and suppliers.
- Uses evidence and service data to prioritise activity and recommend improvements.
- Builds a collaborative, inclusive culture in which knowledge is shared and problems are solved together.
- Balances pace with control, maintaining accurate records and auditable decisions.
