- IT constantly struggles with end-user complaints about services, communications, or both.
- IT leaders are left out of the decision-making process due to lack of trust in IT capability, and they experience funding and approval roadblocks due to lack of end-user satisfaction with IT’s ability to deliver services.
- IT has a departmental reputation for being unhelpful and causing problems and contend with misperceptions of what IT should be doing.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The nature of the end user-IT relationship has an organization-wide impact. A less than ideal relationship results in a breakdown of trust and confidence, negatively impacting IT’s ability to deliver what the organization needs. Like a marriage, this failed relationship eventually leads to a parting of ways.
- End-user satisfaction can be measured by the perception of IT in two broad categories. Info-Tech classifies the relationship type based on survey satisfaction scores in:
- IT services provided to the end user (support, capacity, availability, reliability)
- IT communications with the end user (communications, projects, changes)
- Most IT organizations have difficulty in one of these two categories, but some will struggle with both. In all cases, there is a need to prioritize for immediate, cost-effective improvement to save the relationship and allow time for longer term repairs.
Impact and Result
- Understand how the negative perceptions of end users become IT's reality.
- Identify the areas where end-user satisfaction is low and the relationship between IT and the user community has become strained.
- Learn quick, low-cost tactics to smooth away the friction, improve end-user satisfaction, and repair the relationship.
- Restore operational effectiveness by removing the roadblocks to productive IT/end-user interactions.