The human side of ITIL – Delivering service management with the Human Touch is a recipe for success

Initiatives such as the recently released ITIL V3 offer a framework of best practise guidelines that, although of significant value, should not be applied robotically; without ensuring that the processes being implemented and the services supported are those that are most critical and beneficial to the business. Components such the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and Change/Release Management underpin the successful implementation of ITIL but are highly process driven rather than customer focused. Implementing ITIL without the right service ethos can result in the time consuming discovery and mapping of IT assets and the presentation of service offerings that are indecipherable to the business. Such unfocused implementations have been the root cause of much distrust and dissatisfaction from the business community with IT in the past.

Putting the Human Touch at the core of service delivery creates a fundamental shift in the way we deliver and support services. It means that we need to have people manning service desks who speak the same language as the customers that they serve and who are skilled at dealing with multiple business issues. It means that we need to prioritise the implementation of our service delivery to those business processes that are the most critical and valuable to the business.

The solutions that we implement in support of these services need to be highly adaptable and capable of extension by the business to ensure that they truly meet changing needs. We should offer self-service with high quality interfaces that are both easy to use and informative, enabling customers to request services, track the process of fulfilment and monitor performance.

Service Desk personnel should have an interface that recognises the status and experience of the individuals that they support and the history and satisfaction level that each has with the services being provided. In this way they can respond to requests and queries with a more ‘Human Touch’ anticipating and understanding the interaction from the customer’s point of view.

Most fundamentally we must never forget that in all areas of service delivery it is the people involved in delivery and their commitment that makes the biggest impact on customer satisfaction. Clients such as Camelot and Greggs bakery show that an iterative development implementation starting with the most critical services and tailored to the specific needs of the business, is the best place to start an ITIL initiative.

Providing service support with the ‘Human Touch’ benefits all those involved.

• Customers get better self service, more personalised support and as a result have increased satisfaction.
• Service Desk Staff have a more fulfilling long term role and an environment that enables them to deliver a higher level of support.
• Administrators on the client side have the opportunity to tailor their services to precisely meet their needs.

The benefits these organisations have achieved in customer satisfaction as well as in reduced overheads and increased efficiency are proof that making the ‘Human Touch’ core to your service management philosophy will deliver tangible results.

For more information, read the white paper “Service Management with the Human Touch”, available from www.hornbill.com.