In scanning through this series of blogs, I noticed some questions regarding working with software consultants and IT folk. I'd like to share one consulting experience I had dealing with a poorly received IT department and its really inferior customer service relationship with its internal clients.
The IT Dept. earned the reputation of being rule followers. The rest of the company was called ignorant or uneducated by the IT Dept. My role was to get them to understand each other and to work cooperatively in the future. Instead of laying blame, I decided to tell the IT Dept. that they needed to change their image - and their PR within the company.
We met as a group to look at ways they could improve their image - and at first came up with the idea to create a mousepad with the 10 things to do before calling the help desk. During this discussion, as these highly detailed, highly technical, and highly brilliant men (they were all men) went into a level of specificity that put me to sleep, my eyes would glaze over - and it became our litmus test. When ArLyne's eyes glaze over, we've gotten too detailed. This little friendly game taught them to stay at a level their customer wished to receive from them. In otherwords, where do I put the key in the ignition - not how was the engine designed.
Next, we did create the mousepad - and also a short-sweet internal newsletter from the IT Dept. to the rest of the organization, with tips, hints, q&a and notice of upcoming changes. People loved it.
Our final program was to create a customer satisfaction survey - 5 questions - and leave it with each internal customer anytime they required and received IT sevice. We created a competition - and rewards. People love competition. This group relished in it and competed to see who would get the best marks and thus the prize each month.
One year later this IT group was rated as the best internal customer service group in the company.
Finance departments and IT departments must always learn how to work cooperatively with each other - hope some of these tips help.