In my last post I introduced you to a recent Aberdeen Group report, Building the Connected IT Service Organization by Jim Rapoza. This time I’d like to comment on one aspect of that report: the argument it puts forward for collaborative ITSM as being aligned with what today’s end-users want and expect.
Aberdeen research into user satisfaction – and dissatisfaction – with ITSM found a high level of complaints about slow response times; some respondents also felt that the service desk was difficult to reach or unresponsive.
The report links these findings to the disparity between, on the one hand, the way people get support for consumer IT products in their leisure time and, on the other hand, the way support is delivered at work.
• With consumer products, support comes from social networks, interactive forums, knowledge bases, and, usually as a last resort, one-to-one sessions with customer support people.
• At work, getting help from peers may be discouraged, there may be a lack of self-service options, and there isn’t any way to collaborate directly with IT support staff.
Aberdeen suggests – and I also believe – that many of the complaints can be overcome by closing up this gap between the two types of support. One of the best ways to do this is, as Aberdeen puts it, “to build a connected support platform that provides social and collaborative support options, bolstered by extensive self-service and peer-enabled support systems”.
Implementing collaborative software can certainly help, but there’s much more to this than software. The organizations that have been most successful with collaborative ITSM have changed their way of working to foster collaboration in many aspects of their business, from project management to training.
The wider aspect of implementing collaborative ITSM is what I’ll focus on in my next blog post.
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