"Lessons learned: is ITIL missing the Human Touch?"

CXO: What lessons have been learned from ITIL adoption?

PB: During Q1 of this year I contributed to a report entitled “What’s next for ITIL and Service Management”, which was produced by the Service Futures Group (www.service-futures.org).  The report looked at organisations that had adopted ITIL.  The research stated that “ITIL implementation is largely influenced by the perception, motives and attitudes of those involved. ITIL is less likely to be successful if it is implemented purely as a way of managing processes and far more likely to be successful if it is implemented as an initiative to change the entire ethos of the IT Department and to deliver benefits to the organisation as a whole”

ITIL Version 2 defined the processes in a linear fashion and organisations would choose whichever processes they felt were of most value, or easiest to implement.  As a result many projects were process led and would eventually run out of steam before the benefits could be realised.  The recent launch of ITIL Version 3 introduced a lifecycle approach that focuses on business value and “Service Strategy” (the first of the 5 new ITIL V3 publications) offers a defined starting point for organisations seeking to adopt ITIL.

The areas that need attention for ITIL to be adopted successfully are People, Process and Product.  Organisations frequently focus on Process and Product, but the People aspect is often restricted to ITIL foundation training for IT staff, with little emphasis on the need to adopt a service ethos.  Without sufficient attention to People, some ‘quick wins’ can be missed entirely.   As new processes are introduced the customer may see this as ‘more unnecessary red tape’ and the perception of the service provided by IT can degrade in the initial phase.

CXO: You mentioned the importance of people in successful ITIL adoption: can you expand on this?

PB: People are key to differentiating between perceived success and failure.  Changing the service ethos of the IT Department is about making the customer feel that it is in control of the business and that IT provide services at their request and in a manner that they find appropriate. To do that we clearly need to be entirely at home with the language the business uses and understands. We also need to know who our customers are, and the experience they have had interacting with us.

We need to ensure that we focus on what our customers regard as most important and don’t get carried away with trying to implement a broad IT strategy that may not deliver visible improvements in customer service.  Communication is critical if the true benefits of any service improvement program are to be realised and it is in this respect that ITIL adoption often suffers.

Although Process and Product are important, remember that People (your service desk staff) provide the customer with the first impression of service and establish the baseline for service quality.  People take ownership of issues and take action to avoid service degradation.  People review trends in service performance and establish the metrics that are meaningful.  It is also People that coach staff on performance to goals.

CXO: Where does communication most break down in ITIL projects?

PB: Too often Service Desk mentality sees customers and consumers of services as potential problem providers. The staff that man Service Desks respond to problems and incidents and are typically trained by and part of the IT infrastructure. In many cases, technical staff view the Service Desk purely as a stepping stone in their IT career progression and Service Desk Managers struggle to retain competent people, so a high attrition rate is accepted as the norm. Service Desk staff are often made to feel subservient to the business, rather than praised for providing excellent service.  When excellent service is provided, the business is not told what IT has achieved.

The understanding of the business departments that the service desk supports is all too often very limited. This needs to be reversed with a high percentage of the staff in direct service functions having real knowledge of the business and IT management continually refining the support processes so that they are business driven.

Defining the services required should be regarded as the responsibility of the business and mapped to existing services that are already offered internally and externally. Where services are required and requested that do not yet exist, processes need to be put in place that examine the need and its business value and then determine the most appropriate mechanism to deliver them at an acceptable cost.

The new V3 release of ITIL has moved much closer to embracing business value but it still uses acronyms and terms that the business does not immediately relate to. There is still a need to translate technical and ITIL terms into phrases readily understood by the business. Educating customers and support staff in the processes, practises and language defined by ITIL is simply not enough to deliver good service. Delivering service with The Human Touch requires that the service teams embrace the business language and fully understand the needs of their customers. 

CXO: What can be done to break down barriers between IT and other departments?

PB: IT can work to increase its status and humanise its approach.  This doesn’t require a radical change of process.  Instead, IT simply needs to interact more with its customers.  Service Desk staff should be recruited based on their customer service skills.  IT departments can hold ‘open days’ and invite their customers to come and speak with IT staff.  IT Managers should visit with new line of business managers as soon as they are appointed and explain how IT can assist them and support their role.  IT should keep business managers informed about incidents reported by their business unit and have a formal policy for incident reduction.  IT managers can establish formal policies for incident reduction and change priorities to support periodic fluctuations when particular business units are under the most pressure e.g. reducing response times for the Sales team at the close of each quarter.

I was speaking at a seminar recently about the importance of a service ethos within IT and during a break I was chatting with another.  When he addressed the audience, he relayed his experience as CIO of a large insurance company.  He explained that he turned around the perception of the IT department, from abysmal to award-winning within 6 months of his tenure.  He did not spend any extra money, implemented no new systems, nor did he need to radically change process.  Instead, he simply mapped out the most influential business managers within the organization and instructed his most customer focused IT staff to visit these managers on a daily basis to check that they were being adequately supported by his team.  Perception of the service IT offered was recognized at Board level within a couple of months and within 6 months his team had won awards for service excellence.

CXO: What should IT organisations look for in Service Desk applications to support the Human Touch?

PB: The rapid uptake of ITIL has somewhat levelled the playing field and there are now several Service Desk tools that can claim to tick all or most of the boxes in relation to ITIL processes.  Many vendors offer a CMDB as an integral part of their Service Desk solution and graphical interfaces to configure workflow and design forms.  Many reasonably priced tools are now sufficiently scalable to address the requirements of global IT organisations. Decisions to purchase one tool or another are often made according to the buyers comfort with the vendor, cost and individual preference for the look and feel of the application. Whilst ITIL processes should be supported by the tool, organisations seeking a new Service Desk would do well to remember the primary reasons for their purchase…to improve the perception of IT service provision and increase customer satisfaction.

Hornbill recognised a need to provide IT Service Desk staff with tools that promote the Human Touch and earlier this year we launched the next generation of our Supportworks ITSM application according to these principles.

If a SelfService, or Web Portal is available to the customer, it should allow them to raise their requests in business only language, explaining the options and possibly costs to business people must be done in a way that makes sense to them and doesn’t mention unnecessary detail. What matters is that the service meets a business need, nothing more.

IT staff need to be better prepared at the point of contact with the customer.  They should be immediately aware of the services that are most important to the customer at the point when incidents are logged.  If the customer is calling about one of these services, their requests can be prioritised appropriately.

IT should be aware of the customers’ capabilities; Are they technical?  Would they be willing to follow some instructions to implement a fix, or are they new member of staff that is not familiar with an application?   This enables IT to provide appropriate levels of support to different customers. 

Finally, the customer’s satisfaction level needs to be visible.  Is the customer happy, or unhappy with the way their requests have been handled? All of this information prepares IT staff when interacting with the customer and enables them to offer a better service and focus on the Human Touch.