Discussion on:

How IT can alienate the very people they serve

{ You???ve entered a magical and wonderful world, and this is before you???ve even pulled out your wallet to pay for admission. } Yes, but with the expectation that you ARE going to pay. Spending a week in Disney's parking lot is not nearly as fun as walking down Main Street USA.

The truth is that most "business users" do not pay for IT services. There are few effective chargeback models in place. Therefore, IT is a cost center paid out of a general fund. It's treated like overhead; like lighting, HVAC and plumbing.

The fact is that IT is not as simple, clear-cut or robust as your average HVAC, electrical distribution or plumbing system.

People do not bring their own toilets to work; then throw tantrums when the building's physical plant management won't install them. When employees are told they can't have their own coffee pots or toaster-ovens at their desk due to building and fire codes, they may grumble, but they don't revolt.

IT has to constantly justify its headcount and demonstrate that IT is delivering on its responsibilities. The primary reason to have a helpdesk ticketing system is to demonstrate the number of problems generated and the number of problems solved: both data points used to justify additional headcount, training and resource requests.

If you want top-shelf service, there is going to be a top-shelf cost. If you want service at no cost, you are going to have to live within the parameters that IT can commit to or has been forced to commit to.

With your experience with your cloud/hosting provider: if you don't like their service, don't use it. It's that simple.

Hopefully in both of the cases you speak about, you tell someone about your issues. In the case of the service company that does not support IE, the more they hear from customers that they lost their business because of this fact, the more likely they are to do something about it. In the case of internal IT, start forging a partnership by speaking to them about your experience and enable them to see themselves through their customers eyes. It really doesn't matter what is behind their flawed services, the only thing that matters is getting the opportunity to continually improve.

The Disneyland comparision is comparing apples with oranges.

Disneyland is a profit center - most organisations see IT as a cost center. A bit of forward planning and spend a dollar to make a dollar rather than continually cutting would provide better return from IT.

This article really hilights the gap of understanding between management and IT in many places. Gray is lamenting what IT is doing. Management sets the direction and priorities for IT. Now, IT is not blameless. Often, IT presents management with too much data and not enough interpretation covering opportunity costs. That said, how many articles have been written over the years for IT managers as they try to squeeze budget enough budget dollars out of a company to effectively support growth targets?

Many IT pros who serve at a Helpdesk know that the much of the time they answer the phone, they face an angry, resentful, confrontational person on the other end through no fault of their own. They have to be part psychologist in addition to an all system knowing oracle. Many helpdesks would love to give that "value-add" of workstation visits and friendly chats over what mobile device works best for your daughter, but when the call queue is backed up on Monday morning because it seems like 20% of the company can't remember a password over the weekend and managment won't fund a self serve option, or worse, end users won't USE a self serve option, well, it is difficult to feel the love.

More specifically, one of the biggest understanding gaps for help desks is that the metrics of speed of answer, customer satisfaction, and first call resolution all pull in different directions. It is up to management to set the priorities and in order to keep staff costs down, first call resolution often suffers. When you ask management to prioritize, they often answer "yes", meaning they want it all, including boat rides and castles. Meanwhile, upper management threatens IT management over costs by labeling a potential strategic edge as a commodity. In case Mr. Gray hasn't noticed, Disneyland costs big dollars.

Further, IT can't spend 20 minutes on an initial call helping someone who was never properly TRAINED to use the software because there are 10 people in Mr. Gray's dreaded hold queue.

In example after example, the help desk is used to mask poor planning and implementation elsewhere in the company.