Positive Services and SLAs!
I spend a lot of time, and have done for many years, talking to and working with organizations who are trying to set up IT services and Service Level Agreements.
Usually what’s involved is for me to provide a good amount of information and ‘know-how’ on how to approach doing this, accompanied by loads of encouragement and support – in order to give the client both the understanding and the confidence to drive this through.
For me the assimilation of this ‘knowledge’ has come through the medium of many prolonged and difficult projects – generally where negotiation or communications have failed and/or expectations have in some way been missed
Like many in the industry I have of course compiled a lot of this information together in written form to try to provide as much advance expectation of this things that go wrong – much of this is available. However recently, one thing occurred to me that I really hadn’t thought of quite so explicitly before:
All of our SLAs (and often services) are described and defined in really negative terms…
If you go into a shop or say a car showroom, the sales person doesn’t immediately start telling you about the liability associated with the product, or how often it is expected to fail, or when you might expect it to be unavailable.
The car salesman doesn’t start to tell you about the car’s handling faults before they’ve got you interested, or if you are buying clothes they wouldn’t tell you that the clothes you are interested in were made using slave labor, or that the material is cheap so won’t last more than 5 washes…
If you are trying to sell something then you need to (emotionally) engage your prospect first before you give them any bad news. Ideally if they are interested and sold enough on the positive aspects of the product, then they will accept the negative ones. However if you start out by focussing on the down-sides, you may not get the chance to sell the up-sides and will lose your prospective customer.
Of course I’m not suggesting that sales should be devious and not mention negatives, and we need to be open and honest about what we are selling. However, in terms of emotional response, first impressions count and are lasting, so it makes sense to start off trying to win people over.
It’s much easier to give them bad news once they’ve emotionally engaged, rather than trying to sell them something that they’ve already discounted. I know – it’s basic sales technique.
So what’s this got to do with IT and SLAs?
Everything.
We tend to write and present SLAs and service descriptions that simply refer to how we react and manage issues, or how long it will take us to respond (or not) and how long our service is available (or not). We don’t often write SLAs that tell our customers how much we are doing to help them do their job, or how fast/efficient/cost effective the service is, or how it delivers value to them.
This of course is easier said than done as often IT services aren’t the most exciting or engaging of ‘products’ to sell. However we should be trying to present and define our services in as much of a positive and user-engaging way as possible.
So how can this help with SLM?
By far the biggest hurdle to climb in developing SLAs is getting people on-side, on-board, on-message – and to ‘buy-in’. Everyone will tell you that the ‘business isn’t interested’, ‘we can’t get them involved’, ‘they don’t want to know’ etc.
Well maybe it’s no wonder if any previous attempt to look at this has resulted in a turgid list of negative and dull IT support tasks and responsibilities that say nothing about the customer’s business.
We need to present information on our services and service levels in a format that engages and enthuses people where possible – we can start on this by focussing on the positive – i.e. what does the service deliver in terms of value to the business and / or our customer’s ability to do their job?
Sure we will need to include information on support and what happens when things go wrong, but we really also should be thinking about how we can get customers on-side with us – so lets be radical and start with the positive…!
So as an example – rather than saying:
We provide you with Email services that will fail at some point. When they do we react pretty well and won’t make your life miserable for too long (although we can’t say for how long)
Why not say:
Your E-mail service helps you to communicate instantly and globally with your customers and contacts, wherever and whenever you need to. We help each employee to make an average of 400 email contacts per day, as well as managing your schedule in synch with your on-the-go PDA. Your IT dept also delivers this at very competitive cost compared to domestic services and with high standards of security and safety. If you have any issues with this service please contact our award-wining service desk for support… etc etc.
OK maybe I’m just dreaming but the message has got to be: lets be positive!
Thursday 29 April 2010
Tuesday 13 April 2010
'PolITILical correctness gone crazy'...?
'Things aint what they used to be'...
So much debate these days about how technology has ruined our social skills, and how today’s teenagers don’t know how to run an executive dinner party, and how global warming is affecting our work/life balance, Twitter is damaging the eco-system and political correctness isn’t what it used to be.
I suspect we’re no different to previous generations in terms of how we view the world changing and how ‘things ain't what they used to be’ etc. There’s no doubt that we continue to do stupid things to ourselves and our planet, but again I’d rather be alive now than many unpleasant and unjust times in the past.
However, back in the micro-climate that is ITSM, one thing that has struck me in the last few years is simply this;
We seem to have created a bit of a monster, where everything is far more complicated than it needs to be. Around this monster there have also emerged a number of myths and legends and ‘thought leadership’ forums that need to be constantly fed and developed. In many cases the original ideas and truths around service management have become blurred and clouded by all the hype.
I have never been a fan of the over-expansion and over-exploitation of ITIL, and I really wanted V3 to condense into 1 slim volume rather than go up to 5 and more. Like many people I’ve gone along with this re-growth as V3 has really spoken to a whole new audience and other parts of IT and business. I also know and welcome the concept of the ‘broad church’ so there will be many different individual views and publications to match. However I do feel that the real essence and clarity of ideas now is often lost, plus the scale, machinery and over commercialization of the education program have all detracted from the real goals
There are some great ideas in v3 and I know many great people who have been involved with its creation, however I don’t still understand why we couldn’t have produced something really simple and memorable, that is actually used.
So, when I was discussing Service Catalog, service definition and design the other day I was then asked more about why the approach I proposed seemed to follow more of a ‘v2 rather than v3 approach’, and ‘oh why had I chosen to do this?’ Its not that I mind the question, its just that usually this is seen as more important than trying to piece together a workable service ‘supply chain’.
Regularly when discussing Service Catalog (which is in its implementation still a relatively new topic) I get asked about my opinion and strategy around portfolio and demand management. I know from the responses to my answers that these questions are generally asked without the remotest idea about what these things are or how they might be used in that organization.
Again I don’t mind and of course will be there to help and provide advice, but it seems that many people who are now ‘ITIL experts’ actually don’t know much or don’t have much real experience in doing ITSM...
Anyway ... Let's keep hold of the good stuff
To me what is important to grasp is the real shift in thinking from SYSTEM to SERVICE – and all that that implies. Service Catalog to me is the key to drive this and, once you start down the path of working through the IT ‘supply chain’, you are hooked into the quest to build both the catalog and the service delivery capability to meet it.
To me whether you use a version 2, 3 or 8.1.5 approach is irrelevant, what’s important is that you are building an understanding of your customers needs – from their perspective as well as IT’s – and then making sure that IT is set up to deliver it.
‘Political Correctness’ is often a misused and misunderstood concept – seen as being modern liberal-minded thinking applied in absurdum to simple and basic ideas. But mostly it’s right and based on solid principles – no one sensible would agree that it is OK to use an old racist term, even if its not ‘meant badly’.
However it’s often when these ideas are taken to extremes - and the original kernel of good sense transformed into something that it plainly is not – that people then rail against the whole concept of doing things properly. That’s what I see happening with ITIL and I hope we can resist it and hang on to the good stuff.
So much debate these days about how technology has ruined our social skills, and how today’s teenagers don’t know how to run an executive dinner party, and how global warming is affecting our work/life balance, Twitter is damaging the eco-system and political correctness isn’t what it used to be.
I suspect we’re no different to previous generations in terms of how we view the world changing and how ‘things ain't what they used to be’ etc. There’s no doubt that we continue to do stupid things to ourselves and our planet, but again I’d rather be alive now than many unpleasant and unjust times in the past.
However, back in the micro-climate that is ITSM, one thing that has struck me in the last few years is simply this;
We seem to have created a bit of a monster, where everything is far more complicated than it needs to be. Around this monster there have also emerged a number of myths and legends and ‘thought leadership’ forums that need to be constantly fed and developed. In many cases the original ideas and truths around service management have become blurred and clouded by all the hype.
I have never been a fan of the over-expansion and over-exploitation of ITIL, and I really wanted V3 to condense into 1 slim volume rather than go up to 5 and more. Like many people I’ve gone along with this re-growth as V3 has really spoken to a whole new audience and other parts of IT and business. I also know and welcome the concept of the ‘broad church’ so there will be many different individual views and publications to match. However I do feel that the real essence and clarity of ideas now is often lost, plus the scale, machinery and over commercialization of the education program have all detracted from the real goals
There are some great ideas in v3 and I know many great people who have been involved with its creation, however I don’t still understand why we couldn’t have produced something really simple and memorable, that is actually used.
So, when I was discussing Service Catalog, service definition and design the other day I was then asked more about why the approach I proposed seemed to follow more of a ‘v2 rather than v3 approach’, and ‘oh why had I chosen to do this?’ Its not that I mind the question, its just that usually this is seen as more important than trying to piece together a workable service ‘supply chain’.
Regularly when discussing Service Catalog (which is in its implementation still a relatively new topic) I get asked about my opinion and strategy around portfolio and demand management. I know from the responses to my answers that these questions are generally asked without the remotest idea about what these things are or how they might be used in that organization.
Again I don’t mind and of course will be there to help and provide advice, but it seems that many people who are now ‘ITIL experts’ actually don’t know much or don’t have much real experience in doing ITSM...
Anyway ... Let's keep hold of the good stuff
To me what is important to grasp is the real shift in thinking from SYSTEM to SERVICE – and all that that implies. Service Catalog to me is the key to drive this and, once you start down the path of working through the IT ‘supply chain’, you are hooked into the quest to build both the catalog and the service delivery capability to meet it.
To me whether you use a version 2, 3 or 8.1.5 approach is irrelevant, what’s important is that you are building an understanding of your customers needs – from their perspective as well as IT’s – and then making sure that IT is set up to deliver it.
‘Political Correctness’ is often a misused and misunderstood concept – seen as being modern liberal-minded thinking applied in absurdum to simple and basic ideas. But mostly it’s right and based on solid principles – no one sensible would agree that it is OK to use an old racist term, even if its not ‘meant badly’.
However it’s often when these ideas are taken to extremes - and the original kernel of good sense transformed into something that it plainly is not – that people then rail against the whole concept of doing things properly. That’s what I see happening with ITIL and I hope we can resist it and hang on to the good stuff.
