Notebook

Self-Service IT Organization

28 Feb 2012 at 9 AM

For the past ten years I've worked with an IT organization at a large research university. I believe the organization can benefit from embracing a self-service approach to IT support. But, will self-service help or hurt a culture that values customer service and control?

In 2008 I purchased an iPhone, a trend that a large number of faculty and staff at the university followed. At the time, we supported a RIM infrastructure for BlackBerry devices and the necessary IT staff to help support those devices. Still, many people jumped ship to the hot new Apple phone.

Now, some years later, the university has ended its RIM service. I haven't heard any complaints. Why? Because the iPhone mostly just works. I don't know what happened to the staff who supported the RIM solution, but they didn't move to supporting iPhones, you don't need support when something just works. We'll come back to this.

Last year I wrote about Self-Service Web Applications, suggesting that people should be able to use a web application without interacting with IT staff. The practice has worked quite well, we have hundreds of users in that first self-service application and neither I nor other IT staff have done anything to facilitate it. It just happened. It fits our value of customer service, but we gave up control. What would happen if a student used our web application to share porn? What if the president's office uses our application and it breaks? We would look terrible! Guess what? That hasn't happened, or if it has, I haven't heard about it.

Could it be that control and customer service are opposite forces? Does good customer service put the customer in control? In our web environment we have a process for requesting web hosting, a trouble ticket is generated and someone creates a directory. I suspect we could automate the creation of a directory, but we haven't because we value control. Control adds a day to the turnaround time, at the cost of customer service. The same thing happens with software installs, I'm not allowed to install software on my desktop, instead I e-mail our desktop support staff and they queue up a push of the software package. In my experience it's a few clicks on their end.

So what happens if we put the customer in control?

Better understanding of our processes. Every implicit action the staff takes, such as deciding who can have a website and what their quota should be, must be documented explicitly for automation. An objection I've heard to automating software installs is version interoperability between packages. Automating software installs would force us to explicitly understand that process.

Errors would decrease. By building tools suited for everyone we limit ourselves from making mistakes. If Tom doesn't know Firefox 6.2 breaks our SAP GUI a well designed system would tell him.

Service visibility increases. A lot of what our IT organization does is only available on request. Automating requires creating a public face for each service. Publicizing becomes part of the process instead of an afterthought.

Customer service would increase. At least for those that like control. For those that don't we would have better tools to provide individual support.

What does this have to do with iPhones? The iPhone is a self-service platform. Installing apps doesn't require knowledge of dependencies, you don't need to install backup software, my Mom uses an iPhone quite well without my help. I wish I could say that about her Windows laptop, maybe one day I will be able to. The Mac AppStore is a step in this direction, central package management, magic cloud storage, all in a semi-foolproof self-service package. On Windows, systems like PortableApps are beginning to address this need. I use PortableApps not for portability, but because it provides better (faster?) customer service than I get from our help desk.

As more options exists my university's users will have a choice: use our IT support or use the one with less errors, more services, and better customer service that came with their device. Over the next ten years IT departments have a choice as well, give users control, or wait for them to find someone who will.

Note: there are a lot of innovative things happening related to cutting edge research that cannot be automated. I do not have any hard numbers, but I suspect most of our IT efforts are not focused on these innovative areas.