IT Doesn't Have To Be Annoying

How to improve the perception of IT departments.

Brighton, Michigan made the headlines not too long ago when the city council passed an ordinance that you could be ticketed and fined for annoying someone.  I don't intend to get into specifics of what's going on in Brighton, but I couldn't help but think any information technology folks passing through Brighton might want to be very careful, given our reputation. This reputation of annoying people with our indifference, poor customer service and overbearing policies and standards may not be accurate or deserved, but it persists.

Because it persists perhaps we should do something to counteract it. Why is this so important? Think back to your childhood. You're in the back seat of the family car on the way home from an outing with your parents and your brother or sister. It's been a great day of fun, laughter and fellowship. And then your brother pokes you in the arm. No big deal. He does it again and you give him a dirty look. He pokes you a third time and you yell, "Quit it!" He doesn't and mayhem breaks out until dad bellows, "Don't you make me stop this car!" That's what set the tone for the day--not all the good things but being annoyed with your brother.

IT departments can be similarly annoying and leave a bad impression. All those great things we've done are quickly undone as we "poke" our users every time they use the system or ask for help or try to do something with their PC.

Perhaps we should make a concerted effort to address these IT annoyances and remove them. But that's easier said than done. Some irritating IT issues can be fixed easily, while other issues are harder to fix. And some things shouldn't be fixed at all. Some examples:

--Easy to fix: Broadcasting e-mails to everyone, even if it doesn't apply to everyone. For example, if the server for the customer relationship management application will be down for maintenance, you broadcast an e-mail to everyone in the company rather than just the CRM users. Or perhaps you send out notices with cryptic techno-speak that non-IT people find incomprehensible.

--Hard to fix: People hate having to sign on individually to every system or program they use. A single sign-on system is a great solution but not one that can be quickly or inexpensively implemented. You may have a hard time getting it approved in today's economic climate.

--Shouldn't or cannot be fixed: The need to authenticate via sign-on to the network and e-mail retention policies can be annoying to users but are very necessary things that cannot or should not be "fixed."

So where do we start? Let's start by asking people what our IT department does that annoys our users. Formally ask people in surveys, e-mail or some other means what things IT does that bugs them. Promise to address each of these issues as an incentive to get people to respond. If you get a lot of responses--and don't be surprised if you do--rank them by which ones showed up the most often. Then start addressing each item, starting with the most annoying.

The key is to address each issue, but this doesn't necessarily mean eliminating the annoyance. It means that we should be upfront and explain why we need to do certain things and whether we can or should make them less annoying.

IT annoyances that shouldn't or can't be fixed are perhaps the easiest to address. For these, all you can do is communicate why these annoying issues have been deliberately implemented. If people understand the underlying reason, they may be more accepting of the issue. Have no doubt, they won't be happy with your answer, but they just might be more understanding, or at least, have a better perception of IT.

IT annoyances that are hard to fix may require getting more funding or resources approved to make changes. It will require effort from management, IT and users. Get your users involved and committed to support getting resources budgeted or freed up. The survey results can also be useful in demonstrating the need for change. With a little help, you can make progress.

IT annoyances that are easy to fix may require the most work simply because they are the most common. Use your survey results to rank them and attack them in that order. Given that resources are probably scarce, allocate a certain amount of time each month for these issues and people will notice and appreciate the progress.

We would like to think that people form their opinion about IT as a result of all the good things we do and the big projects we deliver, and they do. But they also form their opinion based upon their daily interaction with IT. This is important because the opinion of our most frequent users also feeds and helps form the opinion of upper management, the people that control our budgets. Keep that in mind before dismissing little annoyances as trivial.

How do you address the things people find annoying about IT? Please add your thoughts in the Comments section.

This article is also posted on Forbes.com.  Feel free to join in the discussion either on this site or at Forbes.com

"annoyance" photo by in retrospect

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

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• Or the posts in the "Customer Service" category

Comments

[Yay for J]

This is a really good (and very true) article about IT. I think a little communication would go an extremely long way with the users! It's really about including everyone instead of excluding them. I keep pushing this at work!

I mean, if IT were on the playground, even Accounting would've kicked our butts a long time ago! *grin*

[Mike]

Yay for J
 
Communication is vital.  If we don't let people know what we are doing and why they will assume the worst.  No good reason to let that happen.
 
I love the playground analogy.  Those accountants always like to pick on us geeks.
 
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
 
Mike

[Jeff]

One of the first things to do is to recognize and understand the annoyances. One source is calls to your help desk. How many organizations take the time to actually analyze the calls beyond standard performance statistics (time to respond, calls open n days, etc.). In addition to tracking and trending the nature of the calls, you can learn by looking back over a longer period. Have people stopped calling because the annoyance is so ingrained that they've given up.

In these days of outsourced and off-shored help desks, I suspect many organizations are missing the opportunity to use this information.

[Mike]

Jeff,

HelpDesk call can be a great source of information. However, we need to keep in mind things that are not errors but merely annoying may not be reported. Also as you point out we may by our lack of response teach people not bother reporting issues. Still it would be worthwhile to review the HD logs for recurring issues and use that as a starting point. Thanks for commenting.

Mike

[Douglas Schultz]

I've been in IT for many years and have seen all types of organizations. I've been in organizations that were just a part of corporate overhead that the business had to deal with to the other extreme of being a shared service where the business could pick and choose what they wanted in terms of services (with limits). In the latter organization, we were more in tune with our clients than in some of the others. It was more of a partnership. I remember doing what Jeff described when I was responsible for ECM technologies at a previous employer. We analyzed the calls to the help desk to see the top calls that got passed on to our group. We wrote up guides and trained the help desk in how to solve the top 5 problems. We enabled them to achieve first call resolution and freed us up to work on more high-value issues. It was a win-win for everyone and probably got us out of being an annoyance to our customers.

[Mike]

Douglas,

Thanks for commenting. Since the HelpDesk is typically handles only errors and not annoyances any structure that get you closer to your customer is helpful. It keeps the communication lines open. I've always said you should try to maximize not minimize the number of HelpDesk calls. It indicates that you are engaged with your users and solving their problems otherwise they would learn not to bother calling.

Mike