One of the great revolutions in business that began in the 1980s (and is still underway) is the ascendancy of the customer. It is now much more than a cliché that the customer is king. Today this is as true for internal customers as it is for external customers. The rise of packaged enterprise systems and the rapid growth of outsourcing mean that IT customers have more choices than ever, and our experience is that they will use them if they are dissatisfied. Yet we still find many IT departments that are not focusing on customer satisfaction and are using their institutional position to control their customers. But over time, by not satisfying their customers they are putting their budgets and continued employment at risk. We are going to discuss some of the principles of customer satisfaction and offer suggestions for getting and staying in tune with your customers.
Satisfaction is important because it is a lagging indicator of service quality. If customers are dissatisfied, it's probably because their needs have not been met for some time. When customers become vocally dissatisfied about IT performance, it suggests a systemic failure to communicate and properly set expectations with them.
Watch for telltale signs of dissatisfied customers. Here is a brief customer satisfaction quiz:
- Are customers resisting serving on your review boards and committees?
- Do customers control their share of your IT budget or does IT dictate priorities and project funding?
- Does the customer have a choice of service levels, and are there auditable metrics on the quality of service?
- Are customers going around IT departments by setting up local mini-IT functions?
- Are you having trouble getting support for your initiatives and budget requests?
- When you implement a new system, does the complaining die away in days, weeks, months, or never?
- How often do you have a major system failure of multiple hours or even days in duration?
If you answered yes to some or all of these questions we can guarantee you have dissatisfied customers even if they're not complaining to you directly. In fact, if they're not communicating, you're in big trouble. In my experience, when customers stop publicly griping it may be the calm before the storm.
What can be done to improve satisfaction? Here are some simple steps to making customers more satisfied:
Meet their expectations
A customer who expects more than they are receiving will be dissatisfied no matter what the absolute quality of the service. If your department has a reputation of giving customers happy talk, or future promises to keep them at bay -- watch out!
Believe their complaints, not their vision
Customers are not necessarily the best determiners of technology choices. They tend to define their needs based on what they know, not what is possible. However, if you offer them options, they are able to select among them and to articulate flaws. Customers are best able to help correct flaws in interfaces, usability issues, and functional deficiencies. These flaws should not be criticised, but listened to and corrected as soon as possible.
Empower customers
A common complaint we hear from IT is that customers are setting up their own shadow IT departments and are not using the institutional systems. This is particularly true in high-tech organisations where there is an abundance of computer literate staff who are often frustrated at the slow pace of change and the lack of control over the systems they use daily.
