The IT Services organization serves a critical purpose within today's enterprise. Rather than declining in importance, as was anticipated with the emergence of BYOD models and the new more "intelligent" devices coming to market, IT support has in fact become more important than ever before. Employees continue to need support as they bring their own hardware into the company environment, and companies need to manage and monitor many different computer and device types as well as the associated security concerns. IT Services is to the enterprise what customer service is to Zappos or Amazon, and it should be measured accordingly. But too often, organizations trade off IT service quality for cost. Consequently, business satisfaction declines and user engagement is negatively impacted. The research and recommendations below provide information and ideas to help IT service organizations structure services for optimal business satisfaction and engagement.
- I&O Organizations Must Strike a Better Balance Between Business Satisfaction and Engagement Levels
- Jarod Greene
- 11 September 2013
- I&O organizations struggle to support and deliver IT services that satisfy the business. Instead, they should strive to drive engagement, which can foster a deeper, more beneficial relationship and better position them to satisfy customers moving forward.
Impacts
- I&O organizations continue to unsuccessfully satisfy consumers, resulting in alienation and disengagement from unmet expectations.
- Unsatisfied business users will shift to consumerization and cloud-based services, and thereby receive support outside the IT organization, making it hard for I&O to demonstrate value in rapid restoration of services.
- I&O organizations continue to use antiquated means to gather customer sentiment and satisfaction levels, failing to gather valuable feedback and trend analysis for IT strategic planning.
Vitalyst Perspective
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Phone Support Remains A Service Desk Imperative
This research outlines important considerations related to the future of enterprise service desk support. In addition to increased "face time" with business users and leverage of company social media feedback, we believe telephone-based support remains a critical element in the service desk offering. Phone support is absolutely imperative in highly mobile enterprise environments where physical co-location of resources is not a viable option. Additionally, effective and readily accessible phone support can in fact drive high levels of business user satisfaction and engagement, as evidenced by positive feedback from business users who have received phone support from Vitalyst productivity consultants.
Business users still want to be able to speak to a live person when they need help, and this is unlikely to abate any time soon. There is absolutely a need to strike a balance between engagement and satisfaction, and also a balance between IT cost reduction and optimal support for the organization. Those companies that swing too far in the direction of cost reduction will most certainly compromise employee engagement, and force business users to seek solutions elsewhere.
Additional reading: The Future of Enterprise Service Desk Support
