Anticlue

The road to Good Perceptions is different than to Good Outcomes

In IT, the customer’s perceptions about your organization really equates to how it grows and expands or withers on the vine. It is a vicious cycle, if enhancements and problems are reported to an endless list of work to be done. The resources aren’t focused on the work which needs to be done. Therefore the customer department doesn’t think very positively of the IT department. Once this occurs, then it becomes harder to obtain funds. If the funding engine doesn’t grow, neither does the IT department. A lack of funding for recruitment, new hires, training, or worse existing staff, causes stagnate boiled frog mentality of the it staff. This result circles around to request customer work not getting done. Beginning to see the cycle? Customer perceptions drive growth.

In IT as all other industries good outcomes are driven by efficiency uncovered in process improvements. For example, let’s say you were implementing a evening clinical application support department. This would be a considerable process improvement to get help to the physician and clinician in need in a timely manner. This outcome would be delivered by the hard work of a team of people. It would result in numerous gained operating efficiencies.

However what would be the end result if the evening clinical support analyst was extremely functional technically but had no customer service skills? The efficiencies uncovered would be lost on the customer having to deal with the gruff treatment of the analyst. Remember from Peter Drucker, "Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it"

That is the key, customer service should be on everyone’s mind - from the CIO to the secretary to the analyst in the field to the technician in the back room. Every one should be able to state the top drivers of customer loyalty and present key topics to them in this manner.

Let’s say a key driver of customer loyalty is concern for the clinician’s time. So the field analyst shows up to help out with the problem at hand. To give the perception we are concerned for the clinician’s time, the analyst should call first and say. “I’m here to help solve the computer problem, if you have a couple of minutes I’ll be right by. However, if you have other pressing things to do, let me know when it is convenient and I’ll drop by then.” When we concentrate on what we communicate, we will begin to see an improvement in perceptions.