A VIP person is someone of high status or influence within the company. In contrast, a VIP issue refers to an IT incident or request that significantly impacts the business's functionality, regardless of who reported it. VIP issues can be thought of as Priority 1 (P1) issues, major incidents or major requests.
In any organization, it's common to come across the term "VIP" attached to specific individuals' profiles whose work and needs are essential to the business. There is a tendency to treat these incidents or service requests more urgently than others. However, this approach can sometimes imbalance how service issues are prioritized for value and resources allocated to solve issues.
While senior leaders should receive excellent service, an organization must not sacrifice critical business operations to respond to the needs of one individual. Proper prioritization, which factors in the severity of the issue and its broader impact, is the key to effective IT service management.
Develop a Service-Oriented Mindset
Service orientation begins with understanding the organization's services, including: the structure of those business services, their relationship to IT services and further the relationship to IT applications, platforms and IT infrastructure.
It’s also important to understand the service's impact on the organization from a financial and customer experience perspective. This will help with understanding:
- The customers of the service
- Responses or SLAs to incidents and requests
- Priorities based on impact and urgency
- Focusing the organization on responding to incidents and requests, service warranty, continual improvement and continuity with limited budgets and capabilities.
Create Effective SLAs to Handle VIP Requests
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) are essential for managing expectations and ensuring a consistent response to all issues, including those reported by VIP individuals. SLAs define the timeframe within which a service desk team should respond to and resolve issues based on customer needs and organizational capabilities. Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) are also important to understand relative to SLAs and OLAs.
For VIP individuals, organizations often create customized SLAs/OLAs to guarantee faster response times. However, simply having a VIP SLA isn't enough. There needs to be a strategy to handle both VIP people and critical VIP issues that may arise from other parts of the organization.
Key points to consider when setting SLAs for VIPs:
- Business impact: Does the VIP issue impact critical business operations? Can you identify the cost of the impact?
- Severity: Is the issue preventing a VIP individual from carrying out their essential duties?
- Visibility: How visible is the VIP issue to customers or external stakeholders?
Recognize the Importance of Business Impact
Rather than focusing solely on who submits a ticket, organizations should take a business impact approach to prioritize service issues. This method evaluates the following factors:
- Impact for customers: Is the issue affecting many users, primarily external customers?
- Operational downtime/time to resolution: Will the issue disrupt essential business functions or services for an extended period?
- Revenue impact: Is the issue potentially causing a loss in revenue or affecting key business transactions?
- Business reputation: Will the experience of this issue negatively affect business reputation and have a significant impact now and in the future?
Build a Service Desk Culture that Values Both
A strong service desk is characterized by its ability to balance individuals' needs with the business's demands. Service desk teams should foster a culture where both VIP people and VIP issues are valued — where decisions are driven by SLA governance and logical prioritization —
rather than pressure or hierarchy. This approach helps align the team's efforts and ensures a cohesive response to service issues.
Training is essential to help service desk agents understand how to evaluate issues' criticality and potential business impact based on services based on defined SLAs/OLAs. They should be empowered to prioritize broader organizational needs without, disregarding the importance of attending to VIP individuals.