Analysis:

• Jim Tora is the owner of That’s IT Consultants which provides a range of ICT advisories. He has an MBA from the University of the South Pacific.

As an IT service provider, IT manager, IT Service Desk Manager and Relationship Managers, do you ever wonder what your end-users think of your IT department and the quality of customer service you provide?

I recall back in the early days of my IT career where customer service was key and very vital to maintaining customer relationships but also essential in ensuring that end-users received quality customer service.

However, this was not measured, you either received an email thanking you for a job well done or it was mentioned to you by your customer.

Today you see some organisations have implemented tools to collect customer satisfaction either through customer feedback on their portals, physical mailboxes (those need to go), smiling face type devices for frontline face to face customers and email addresses for customer advocacy.

Collecting this information is difficult, and building a system to collect it efficiently falls low on the priority list when compared with the fires IT is forced to fight on a daily basis.

So, what is the pain or problem?

Managing what priorities IT should focus on is difficult when it’s done with best guesses about what end users think about core IT services. Your job is to make changes within the organisation to improve productivity and efficiency, but you don’t know where to start.

You expect end users to rely on the services you provide, but you don’t know what works and what doesn’t. End-user feedback may sound important and management may buy in to collecting it, but they don’t do anything about the results when you identify areas to improve.

What is the risk when you do nothing?

IT misses the opportunity to enable the business to be more productive by improving core services that have a high impact on end-users. IT also risks spending time and money on things that don’t matter.

You won’t know what can be improved within IT to make it more valuable to the business. You are making assumptions and decisions with no data to back them up. You are working on the wrong things.

The solution

An End User Satisfaction programme is a systematic process for you to reach out to your operationally focused and front line personnel in the business to get their input on how they think IT is doing and where IT might focus to improve the services you provide.

This helps get you get great benchmark on IT satisfaction. You can use this info to help drive your IT strategy and build in IT – Business Alignment. Without a clear understanding of business priorities and satisfaction, your IT leaders are flying blind.

What value do you achieve from this?

You may have some insight into what your problems are, but those are difficult to act on.

The insights from these reports will identify a clear path on how to improve and what to brag about. This will also help you identify the quick wins and longer-term solutions you can implement that will increase end-user satisfaction. Segmentation of data by respondents is easier to communicate to senior management stakeholders to get them to buy-in.

Feedback:  rosi.doviverata@fijisun.com.fj