experience and the pre- and post-sales processes. Whether it be:
• Optimizing the capabilities of inside and outside sales teams
• Supercharging customer support personnel with customer and product knowledge
• Speeding up and providing greater insight into the product and / or service delivery pipeline, or
• Delivering an easy-to-access-and-use online company presence – from accessing product information, through purchase, to post-sales support.
while – that“ IT support” is really“ people support,”“ business support,” or even“ customer support.” With the reality now, in an increasing customer-experienced obsessed world, that IT is ultimately delivering a better customer experience through a potentially long value, or business outcome, chain.
Which starts to raise questions about the adequacy of current IT service delivery and support strategies, policies, processes, people, technologies, and measures. For instance, when evaluating a new ITSM tool, is your company still focusing on features and functions or is it asking the tool vendor to show how their solution will help to deliver the required customer-centric business outcomes? For me, this is all a CIO“ can of worms” whose lid will continue to be opened wider as customer obsession becomes more and more important to business, and thus IT, success.
From an ITSM point of view, the question is:“ How do IT service delivery and support activities effectively support business operations and the customer experience?”
Some ITSM aspects might be pretty straight forward. For instance, availability – if the right things are measured, in the right places, using the right mechanisms. But other aspects, such as IT support, might not be so clear; or at least clear across the board. Because, while some things might be pretty straightforward, such as the importance of the mean time to restore( MTTR) for the online ordering system, others will be less so. For instance, the quality and availability of IT services employed by outside sales personnel and how these impact their ability to fulfill their role and to deliver a good customer experience. It’ s an extension of what I’ ve written about for a
About the Author Stephen Mann
Stephen Mann is Principal and Content Director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM. tools. Also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator, and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals.
6 itSMF Bulletin— August 2017