Many, perhaps even most, of the white papers and articles written on this subject center around the standards that attempt to guide us to deliver world class service to our customers. They put forth the idea that you must ‘implement ITIL’ or ‘implement ISO 20000’ to best deliver IT services to your customers and user community. This is perhaps the most comprehensive way to maximize your IT service organization’s performance, but it also requires a major investment of time, staff training and project work, i.e. a major corporate investment, which many organizations have conscientiously decided against.
But why not just go to the people who already know where you can improve, the users of your service and the analyst who process the various service request day in and day out? All you have to do is ASK them. Use the survey capability of your service management system or a simple email to give your user community the ability to present suggestions for improvement. If you have a self-service portal, provide a prominent reminder that you are open to suggestions for improving your service. Use regular management meetings to give them a constant reminder that you are looking for any and all improvements they can offer.
You don’t need a ‘big’ project team to do this. You do need management commitment to the process. You need to assign someone on the service management team the responsibility to collect the suggestions. The person responsible for service management does need to convene some of their staff on a periodic basis to review and select the suggestions to be implemented. And you need to do this consistently, say once a quarter, to demonstrate that you are serious about implementing the suggestions you gather.
It’s really pretty simple.
- Notify your users that you are open to suggestions for service improvement and remind them regularly
- Review, select and implement these suggestions on a regular frequency, say quarterly
- Send an announcement to your users each time a set of improvements are implemented
- REPEAT!!
What does Nike™ have to do with this? “JUST DO IT”
Note: Dataseti has supported and coached our customers for over 15 years on this approach. We get constant feedback from our customers thanking us for getting them started and keeping them consistent. If you would like to know how we can help, just drop us a note at info@dataseti.com.
-Dan Davis, Manager of Sales and Customer Service
Contact the consulting team at consultants@dataseti.com
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