Article ID: PR033
Category: Process
Title: The Real Meaning of 'Best' Service

We're all professionals. We all want to produce the most appropriate service level for our clients. I use the word 'appropriate' deliberately, because I don't want to fall into the trap of saying 'best'.

It is untrue to strive for the 'best' our service can be, because there are other factors in play.

Among these is cost - and any observer of the recent air travel market will note that when cost is compared to service, cost usually wins.

Sunny Dispositions

Another factor is personnel, and specifically those we choose to retain. You may have somebody in your IT support team who, and I'm being nice here, was not head of the queue in the Stork Departure lounge for pre-flight handouts of empathy and sunny dispositions. But you don't want to let him (and yes, it's usually a him) go because, well nobody has documented the network and it's all in his head.

Another impediment is the tool you use for logging and assigning service requests, be these reported problems, procurement initiations or invocations of change. You've probably had the tool a while and it might have suited when it was first put in, but has not been adapted for change. More likely, it was implemented as closely as possible to how it came out of the box, by somebody who knew relatively little of the complexity of managing service delivery but a lot about setting up service delivery management software; enabling features you would never use to collect data you would never analyse and necessitating other tools to make up for the gaps. And you haven't the time or the resources or the knowledge or the authority to sort it out now. But you have strong suspicions how much better would be the service if the tool were improved.

Brainwashed

Then there are the processes. They get in the way of a good service as well. We've all been brainwashed to believe that a certain brand of processes will cure our service ills. Trust me, they won't. Sure, after 'improving your processes' service levels will go up, but then that was known in the 1940's. In that lesson, improving the lighting in a factory increased productivity - so other improvements were sought and each of these also improved productivity. So just to test what was happening, the lighting was returned to its original level. Sure enough, productivity went up. It's not just the 'improvements that do it', it's the management attention. Any set of processes meant to improve, has to contain within itself the process of improvement. It also has to deal not just with the processes to manage the service, but the processes to manage the people who produce and consume the service. The big process brand simply doesn't do that, and even its forthcoming new incarnation won't change that. It's a false idol and it is safe to be extremely sceptical about it.

If we really wanted the 'best' service, then cost would be no object; we'd be ruthless with the types of staff we hire; we'd have the tool designed to match the way of working and not the other way round; and we would do what we need to do, not what some generic brand of mediocre written-elsewhere processes says it is currently fashionable to do.

We give our customers the most appropriate service. It is the best we can do with the limitations and affordability of the market in which we are working.

Mediocrity and Excellence

However, that means we can still aim for the best we can do with what we've got. Fortunately, that's a great deal. Measured time and again, the gap between service mediocrity and excellence is huge, counted in factors, not fractions. And any IT services shop can achieve it, so long as they keep their eye on the ball. It means you have to put a lot more effort into managing the people on either side of the service wall than current fashion says you should.

There is also another trick - which is that it needs a champion, a real one, a leader. No, this person doesn't have to be a board director. No, doesn't have to control purse strings. But does have to be somebody with the strength to pursue something he or she believes in.

This is one of the reasons why the book-learned process approach can't get you there. Its advocates are currently doing the rounds of the IT services conferences, stating how proud they are that the new versions of the processes do not contain much change, because such a huge number of people were consulted and they collectively insisted on minimal change.

Consensus

But then of course they made that insistence. That's what consensus is. Humans tend to resist change if given the choice - and the more of them you ask, the more the 'average' opinion will emerge. Thus will the answer you get be quintessentially one of conservative mediocrity. It's the most natural thing in the world. The whole point is that average consensus is the very antithesis of excellence. Next time you hear the exponents of the leading brand of IT processes say how thousands of voices said "It's not broken so don't fix it", think "Then that must mean it is mediocre by its very nature." There is a reason why those who resist change are the majority, while those who advocate it tend to be in a minority. George Bernard Shaw had it - "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

In any size of organisation, supporting any number of users, internal or external, - where superlative output were to be produced, I would back the informed and focused individual against committee consensus any day. I would also heartily back the designed method against the imported framework. I would also back building on strengths rather than attempting to minimise weakness. And I would certainly back managing customers instead of trying to please them.

Guilty

We must not feel guilty about not providing stunning service all the time. A large part of what we can achieve is dictated by what the market (i.e the company, its balance sheet and those of its employees that make up the userbase) can bear and how much we really can achieve with the resources we have. However, we can always do better than average. To do that, we have to do something other than what everybody else is doing. That takes focus, design and courage.

Noel Bruton is an independent consultant and trainer who assists IT Services groups and helpdesks to improve the service they provide. Based in the UK, he has a worldwide clientele since establishing his consultancy practice in 1991. He is the author of 'How to Manage the IT Helpdesk - a Guide for User Support Managers' (ISBN 07506 49011) and 'Managing the IT Services Process' ISBN 07506 57235). He writes extensively in the IT press and is a popular speaker on the IT Support conference circuit.

For more information on on Noel Bruton's services, either call +44 (0)1239 811646 or email noel@noelbruton.com.