Most businesses claim to use their customer service organizations as key differentiators in creating competitive advantage in the marketplace, but this claim does not withstand closer analysis. The service the vast majority of these companies provide is actually the same as their competitors, so...
Tag(s): customer service, people, process, business of support, practices and processes
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
If there’s one thing service desks are good at, it is collecting information and reporting on it. If there is one thing they are terrible at, it is being able to focus on the few instead of the many. But one way to find out if anyone is actually reading the reports you spend so much time...
Tag(s): metrics and measurements, people, workforce enablement, process, business of support
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
Once upon a time, customers relied on advertising to shape their perception of an organization. Certainly, some money was poured into customer service, but only enough to keep things moving. If customers had problems, their complaints were usually isolated to a strongly worded letter to the company.
Tag(s): people, customer service, process, business of support
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
The proliferation of mobile devices, increasing social and technical sophistication of the twenty-first-century college graduates entering the workforce, and anytime/anywhere demand for access have gained stronger footholds and show no signs of slowing. At the same time, the economic climate...
Tag(s): people, process, technology, desktop support
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
I remember the first time I encountered the term “managed services.” I had a tough time wrapping my head around those two words put together that way—to me, the meaning was not intuitive. And even though “managed services” has been in common usage for well over a decade, many people still...
Tag(s): process, practices and processes, desktop support
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
Call it the cloud. Call it converged infrastructure. Call it hybrid delivery, or whatever the marketers come up with next. The fact is, the world of IT has changed. It’s the “new IT.” But let’s be honest: it’s not altogether new, and it’s not altogether IT. So what is it, and how is it going to...
Tag(s): process, business of support, framework and methodologies
Date Published May 23, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
When Apple announced the launch of the Apple Stores in 2001, it was met with widespread skepticism. There was concern over the impact the stores would have on Apple’s existing retail channels, the fact that Apple had no experience in retail, and that the mere existence of retail stores would do...
Tag(s): process, business of support, people, customer service
Date Published May 22, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
As organizations multisource their IT services, push services to the cloud, and consolidate services into enterprise-shared services to reduce costs, their success increasingly depends on relationship management rather than the deep systems expertise that has traditionally been their core...
Tag(s): process, business of support, customer service, practices and processes
Date Published May 22, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
Many organizations are starting to make significant structural, procedural, and cultural changes to the perception of desktop support, with the ultimate goal of better integrating it into the support organization. The struggle is in figuring out how to do this, how to apply that creative brush...
Tag(s): desktop support, people, process
Date Published May 22, 2012 - Last Updated May 11, 2016
One of the most common questions I hear from IT support managers is “How many technicians should I have in desktop support?” In this white paper, I will present a rigorous methodology for determining the appropriate technician headcount for desktop support. By following this approach, desktop...
Tag(s): white paper, staffing, metrics and measurements, library, desktop support
Date Published March 15, 2012 - Last Updated December 30, 2014