ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 represents an industry consensus on guidance to auditors and offers assistance to service providers planning service improvements or to be audited against ISO/IEC 20000-1. ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 is based on BS 15000-2, which has been superseded.

Organizations require increasingly advanced facilities (at minimum cost) to meet their business needs. With the increasing dependencies in support services and the diverse range of technologies available, service providers can struggle to maintain high levels of customer service. Working reactively, they spend too little time planning, training, reviewing, investigating, and working with customers. The result is a failure to adopt structured, proactive working practices. Those same service providers are being asked for improved quality, lower costs, greater flexibility, and faster response to customers.

In contrast, effective service management delivers high levels of customer service and customer satisfaction. It also recognizes that services and service management are essential to helping organizations generate revenue and be cost-effective. The ISO/IEC 20000 series enables service providers to understand how to enhance the quality of service delivered to their customers, both internal and external.

The ISO/IEC 20000 series draws a distinction between the best practices of processes, which are independent of organizational form or size and organizational names and structures. The ISO/IEC 20000 series applies to both large and small service providers, and the requirements for best practice service management processes are independent of the service provider's organizational form. These service management processes deliver the best possible service to meet a customer's business needs within agreed resource levels, i.e. service that is professional, cost-effective and with risks which are understood and managed.

The variety of terms used for the same process, and between processes and functional groups (and job titles) can make the subject of service management confusing to the new manager. Understanding the terminology is a tangible and significant benefit from ISO/IEC 20000.