Monthly Archives: August 2010

If client satisfaction is one of the primary measurements that determines whether we are a successful IT organization (and it certainly is), then it makes sense for us to develop strong client service attributes in our IT organization. IT organizations do not develop strong client service skills on their own; they require leadership, guidance, and coaching to get there.

Client service must become a culture within your organization where your staff knows what to do to improve client satisfaction as well as reinforce the appropriate behavior within the organization.

Excellent IT service organizations exhibit high levels of client service in everything they do. It’s a habit, something that takes place automatically, and ultimately requires less energy. The result – you guessed it – very high level of client satisfaction.

Supporting clients is difficult, sometimes downright hard. It is much easier when our clients like what we do and respect what we are doing. Strong client service skills develop true “partners” with clients.

One of the things I share with managers who attend my IT Manager Institute is that when I was an IBM SE in the late 70’s (wow, what a long time ago), I had an excellent track record of taking care of my client. It certainly wasn’t because I was the best technical resource in the organization. My technical skills were decent enough, but the difference maker was some of the traits I list in this article.

I did things that contributed to excellent client satisfaction and incorporated these traits in my management role later in life. When you find things that work well, incorporate them into your management style. It will pay huge dividends and make you a better manager.

Here is a list of ten key items to help improve client service:

1.  Provide value
“Value” is in the eyes of the beholder, or the customer. If we are to be construed as a strong client service organization, our team’s focus and priority must be targeted to what the client truly needs. I use the phrase, “the client is always right” a lot. As a CIO, I certainly need to influence what we work on but the real foundation of what needs to direct my strategy lies within senior management and our users (my client). My job is to translate their real issues and needs into aspects of technology that make the most cost effective sense in addressing these issues and needs. The bottom line here is that if our IT focus does not create a feeling of providing real value in addressing the client’s needs, we aren’t going to be considered to be an organization that provides value.

2.  Keep the client “out of the dark”
Nothing aggravates us more than when we have a problem and don’t know what the status of the issue is or how to solve the problem. Our clients are the same as we are. They have a job to do and they need systems and technology to get their job completed. When they have a problem, we need to make every effort to “keep them in the light” so they know what’s going on. It makes a big difference in improving client satisfaction.

3.  Display a high sense of urgency
Clients do not want to have to push their IT support organization to resolve their technology problems. It’s actually stressful for them to complain and to “nag” us. On the other hand, they have a problem and need it resolved to get their work done. As such, they have a very high sense of urgency in getting “back to normal”. As we respond to day to day issues, we need to exhibit a high sense of urgency in addressing the client’s problem. It may be a small issue but to that particular client, it is the most important issue on our “IT plate” at the time. Develop operating procedures and service level agreements that help you manage client expectations and that allow your IT organization to succeed. When we deliver what and when we say we will deliver, the world seems to spin on its axis much more smoothly.

4.  Be courteous and friendly
Clients want to work with people who are friendly and nice to work with. Our desktop support technicians and Help Desk Coordinators are often have more contact with our client than many of our higher paid employees. Inspecting how these employees are interfacing with your client is very important and developing a mindset that “our business is to support the client” is critical. Teach your staff that every support call is an opportunity in disguise.

5.  Follow-up
This is probably the biggest item on the list and it is a trait that is so important to instill in each of our employees. Clients need to be able to count on their IT organization. The thing that will cause us to lose credibility quicker than anything is when we have employees who commit to do something and do not follow-up. Remember my comment about my IBM SE days mentioned above? Well, the real difference maker was that I had excellent follow-up skills. When I made a commitment, I wrote it down and even when I did not have the answer to an issue, I always contacted my client to give them an update of where we were. They knew they could count on me to resolve the issue or to get back to them. This is a BIG DEAL !!

6.  Over communicate
When a client has a problem, especially if it involves system downtime or something that stops work, we can’t communicate too much. In a bad situation, I will often put a resource on “point” and instruct him/her to contact the client every half hour to give them a status of where we are in resolving the situation. Not only will this extra communication be appreciated, it will go a long way in building the type of relationship you want to have with your client.

7.  Learn to prevent problems
Our IT organization has to be able to “put out the fire” when it occurs, but we need to be in the business of fire prevention. The Help Desk is an excellent source of information to tell us where the problems are, what type of problems we are having, and where to focus fire prevention efforts. When we do things that starts reducing the number of problems, it is important to share these positive results with our clients. After all, we are reducing their headaches and no one is going to discuss the positive steps we are taking if we don’t let people know about it. Organizations that show they are preventing problems exhibit traits of an organization that understands the needs of the business.

8.  Anticipate client needs
We need to anticipate client needs as much as possible rather than wait for the “last minute” call to action. For us to be successful, we have to get the IT organization out of a reactive mode of operation as much as possible. Putting in procedures and processes that helps your organization “be more responsive” gives you an advantage and in an IT management position, we need every advantage possible.

9.  Implement escalation procedures
When problems happen, you want your organization to escalate quickly and automatically as necessary to address the issue as effectively as possible. The client wants to see that we have a high sense of urgency and appropriate escalation of issues within the IT organization and to senior management as necessary shows that you are organized to be responsive.

10.  Use a simple change management process
A certain amount of structure is necessary to allow your IT organization to support the business. Change management processes are critical components to help facilitate the business of supporting client needs. Once change management processes are adopted, the activities related to supporting clients is automatic and much easier to follow. We need change management processes for supporting equipment change requests and for handling programming changes.

Developing a track record of great client service requires discipline and attention to detail. It also requires your IT organization to communicate proactively and responsibly. Implement these ten traits within your IT service delivery approach and you will see a dramatic improvement in your relationships with your clients. It takes everyone on the team delivering support in this manner. One “loose cannon” can undermine a lot of positive progress so inspect your employees and coach them as necessary to reinforce what you expect in supporting your client.

When I worked for IBM in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, I learned a very valuable management lesson from two entirely different sources. The first source was from my IBM SE Manager. He was teaching me about an important management principle although he didn’t tell me.

The second source was from a client. In fact it was the client who bought my first system sale after I became a Marketing Representative. These two managers were very different with little in common other than they knew a thing or two about managing employees.

I was being stretched and didn’t know it
As an IBM rookie Systems Engineer (SE) in 1977, my manager assigned me to a geographic territory and aligned me with a senior salesman. It was exciting times, the era of the mini-computer when small  and mid-size companies were purchasing their first business computer.

The salesman I was partnered with had his best year in 1977. I didn’t realize it at the time but my manager decided to let me install most of the systems that were sold in our territory unless either the senior salesman or I raised our hand and asked for help. I was being stretched, but I had no clue that this was what was happening.

I didn’t really think about asking for help so I worked extra hours to take care of the business that was put in front of me when we sold new systems in our territory. It just seemed to me that it was what I was supposed to do.

By the end of the year, I had installed thirteen new systems in five different industries while supporting over thirty other clients in a geographic territory of some 5,400 square miles. It was the most new installs ever by an SE in that office by far; not something a new rookie SE is supposed to do.

It was a real win-win. “How so?”, you might ask, , , especially for me when I ended up working so many extra hours.

The win for the manager is fairly obvious. Instead of throwing more resource into my territory to help in supporting existing clients or installing the new ones, the manager was able to deploy his resources to other situations of need.  In other words, he was able to leverage his staff.

The win for me was that I was recognized in our January Kickoff meeting with a Regional Manager’s Award and $1,000. It was a great win for me, believe me.

Expect more and you will get more
The second example I learned at IBM was more direct. When I became a Marketing Representative, my first sale was with a small Termite Pest Control Company.

This company had approximately thirty trucks and technicians supporting a fairly large geography. As we discussed the benefits of having a computer system, the main benefit the Owner wanted was to be able to leverage his staff.

He articulated the need this way: “When I send a unit to Vicksburg, some 60 miles away, I want to give my technician a list of ten to twelve jobs to take care of rather than six or seven. While he is there doing a major service, I want him to have a list of several other annual inspections that are coming up. If I give him only four jobs and he completes them by noon, he will goof off until he needs to return so he arrives back here at the end of the day. If I give him twelve jobs, he may not be able to complete all twelve jobs; but he will probably compete eight or nine of them. What this does for us is to improve our productivity quite a bit. The other thing is that it benefits my employee because we pay a monthly bonus when they achieve certain objectives. Having the information that helps me leverage my technician’s time allows them to make more money and our company to be much more productive. We both win.”

I was pretty young at the time, but I’ll never forget this concept and seeing what it did for the Termite Company business. He was able to grow without adding as many people as he would have taken prior to being able to leverage his employee time.

Remember this because it’s a real issue in that people will always find ways to fill their time. If you do not have productive objectives in front of them, they will fill the time with something, but it probably won’t be activity that contributes to the success of your organization or company.

The Termite Company owner focused his employees on specific jobs by providing them access to information. Remember, this was back before spreadsheets and laptops were available; all you had was a handwritten list.

In the other case, my IBM manager allowed me to rise to the need. In both cases, the manager got more from his employee by stretching their expectation.

Employees are actually eager to do more, especially if it’s a win-win. It’s not taking advantage of an employee when you give them more to do and that stretches their capability; it actually helps them grow. Sure, there are limits to assigning more responsibility so be realistic when you do and monitor the situation so you aren’t abusing your employee.

In my IBM situation, I would have seen it as a negative if my manager had thrown more resources into our territory. I wanted to take on the responsibility; the challenge motivated me.

Take a look at your situation and determine if you are stretching your employees. You will find that employees who have a lot to do tend to be happier employees.

Let’s get right to the point.  To establish credibility you have to create successes.

There is nothing like having a track record of successes to validate one’s credibility. It is ultimately what we are all going to be judged on.

Look around and think about this for a moment. Of all the managers you have worked with or currently work with, who are the ones who have credibility in your mind?

It’s the people who have had successes and can get things done – right?

Of course it is, , ,  and I can assure you that whether you ask a client, senior management, or an employee you will get the same answer in almost all cases. You might find a case or two where someone votes for the manager with the winning personality, but more often it’s going to be based on who can get things done and do it in a positive way.

Credibility is not established by “hitting home runs”. It is something that is earned over time. We have all seen the “flash in the pan” manager who comes in, does something wonderful, and then just can’t seem to get things done.  These people impress others quickly but soon fade from the scene of credible managers.

It’s one thing to have a single success; it’s something different and far more important to have “sustained successes”.

Credibility emanates from consistency and doing the little things well. Again, you don’t have to hit a home run to establish your credibility. Start with small successes and work your way up to the “big hit” opportunities. What’s more important is the consistency of your success and that you succeed more often than you fail.

Failing is a matter of life. If you don’t have a failure here or there, then you aren’t trying to do very much. For example, you can guarantee zero errors in a programming support environment, , , but to do that, you have to either eliminate new changes from being worked on or put such a strenuous quality review process in place that your productivity will be unacceptable. We have to strike balance.

The key is to sustain a track record of successes. That doesn’t mean zero failures. That said, it’s important to avoid “disastrous” and “dumb” mistakes.

The cornerstone of success
Managing projects successfully is a critical part of any IT manager’s success. When your team exhibits the ability to deliver projects on time and on budget, you join the minority of the IT managers who achieve this. Many studies suggest that over 70% of all technology projects either fail to be delivered on time or exceed budget.

Believe me, deliver projects on time and within budget and your credibility will grow quickly because you will be viewed totally different than other IT managers who fail most of the time.

What this means is that you need to implement a project management culture within your organization and for your clients. Quantifying the deliverable and scope up front, gaining agreement, and building realistic plans are critical, , , not optional.

Don’t miss this point. Predictable delivery of your projects is essential if you want to be credible. It’s so important that I wrote an entire book titled IT Project Management: a practical approach. In my 5-day IT Manager Institute, I spend an entire half day on the topic of project management and the importance it has on your success and career. Project management is only one aspect of managing technology resources effectively, but it is a key part and the “cornerstone” for your success.

You need credibility in several areas
To be successful, establishing credibility takes many forms. You need to be credible with clients, senior management, and your employees to achieve real success. Managers who can win over senior management for a time but are not credible with clients and/or employees ultimately lose favor from their senior management supporters.

First, create credibility with your customer. At the end of the day, this is the key piece of what you have to have to be credible. Clients have to trust you and know that they can depend upon your IT organization to support their efforts.

Second, create credibility with your employees. It won’t be you the manager who delivers the products and services that the client uses to conduct business. It’s going to be your employees. When they succeed, you will succeed. It can’t work for a sustained amount of time the other way around.

Third, create credibility with senior management. When clients and employees believe in you and trust you, senior management will follow. Another thing that builds credibility with senior management is when you look at the technology support world in more of a business perspective.

Prioritizing and focusing your technology team’s initiatives on issues that make a tangible difference for the company will endear you to your CEO, CFO, and other senior executives. Typically, they want to see cost savings, new revenue opportunities, or productivity improvements from technology initiatives.

Little things make big differences
The manner in which you go about managing people, issues, and processes on a day to day basis creates a persona about you as a manager. Little things go a long way in helping others trust you and trust is an essential foundation in establishing a credible reputation among your colleagues.

Here are some key things to remember:

• People trust people who do what they say they will do.Senior managers admire people who can turn difficult situations into positive ones.
• Clients respect people who are straightforward and manage their expectations well.
• Following up on commitments gains allies in all areas of your business.
• Giving your staff credit for successes and taking responsibility for failures builds tremendous staff loyalty.
• Empowering your employees and providing them the tools to be successful creates great trust.

It’s really not all that difficult to establish a level of credibility within your business environment. Start by taking small steps that lead to bigger strides. Build on the small successes and be consistent in how you go about managing people and issues and especially how you treat others in the workplace. You will find that a consistent approach that treats others with respect will have very positive impact.

Remember, the key is to deliver what you say you will deliver and when you say it will be done. Ultimately, this is the acid test of whether you create trust and what makes a person credible.

If people cannot depend on you to do what you say you will do, no matter how good your intentions, you will not have credibility with them. Telling someone you can’t do something or that it takes longer than they want it to happen may not be what they want to hear, but they will gain respect for you when you actually deliver what you say you will.

Establishing and maintaining credibility has a lot to do with managing expectations, so always try to position yourself to “over deliver”.

Best of success in establishing and maintaining the best of credibility in your business and personal environment.

What type of manager are you? Have you thought about it much?

There are “hip shooters”, , , those who fire at anything that moves. The opposite type are the “procrastinators” who just can’t seem to pull the trigger, especially on the more significant issues.

There are a few “proactive” managers but unfortunately most tend to be “reactive” managers.

There are also managers who wear “red tinted sunglasses” and their opposites who wear “green tinted sunglasses”. How they manage is all about how they see things.

Here is the deal, , , someone who wears red tinted sunglasses does not see red because the red is filtered out. He only sees green. As a result, this manager is much more aggressive because he doesn’t see problems or sense any danger in dealing with an issue.

On the other hand, the manager who wears green tinted shades only sees red because green is filtered out. This manager is much more cautious and deliberate in making decisions because he senses danger at every turn.

It really doesn’t matter what color of shades you wear because both styles can be very effective. What it does mean is that it’s important for each of us to understand whether we are an aggressive, risk taking manager or one who uses lots of caution.

Depending upon the issues at hand and your company environment, the situation might necessitate you to move toward the other type of management style a bit to succeed. Knowing yourself and how you tend to manage is important in determining whether an adjustment might be needed.

It’s 6:31pm my time as I sit down to write this post, , , the end of a long week. I look forward to a nice weekend.

I have a question for you, “What did you get accomplished this week?”.

Do you ask yourself this question from time to time? If not, maybe you should. I don’t know if you have ever gone through a week where you logged the activity of each day, , , hour by hour. If you do, you might be amazed at where your time goes. It was an eye opener when I went through such an exercise.

Self reflection is a good thing as long as you don’t over do it.

Here are some questions you might ask yourself about how your week went:

• How much time did you spend on email this week?
• How much of your week was spent in meetings?
• How much time was spent at lunch?
• Did you spend any time coaching or developing your employees?
• Was there any time spent developing your own skills?
• How much time was spent at work versus at home?
• What was the percentage of time you could truly call productive?
• Would your boss think your time was well spent?
• What would you do differently in retrospect?
• Did you work on that personal project or did you not get to it, , , again?

Learn about where and how you spend your time so you can weed out the “lost time”. If you are like most, you probably lose quite a bit of productive time.

I completed an IT due diligence project (a technology assessment) one time, and I discovered something very special – a company with a tremendous “cooperative spirit”.

The culture in this company was focused on the client and everyone I talked to had a strong sense of client service and purpose in helping one another do the  best job possible.

All too often, hard charging managers and senior technical people are competitive and allow this to become a weakness versus a strength. It’s good to be competitive, but not when it prevents a sincere sense of being helpful to others in the company.

Winning is about the customer winning and not about your organization or team member winning. If the customer isn’t successful, believe me when I say that we won’t be successful as an IT organization.

Your client may be an outside client or an internal organization. Regardless of who it is, there are going to be challenges and pressures placed on your ability to support that client effectively. When these pressures arise, meet them head on with a positive and “cooperative” spirit.

Look for win-win opportunities where everyone comes out of a difficult situation in a positive way. Certainly, the outcome may not be the optimal for you personally or your team, but when both parties win after confrontational issues arise, they start helping one another down the road.

If you have ever worked in a company with a cooperative spirit, you know just how great it is. People helping one another during the good times and the tough times builds camaraderie like you can’t believe.

Approach your most difficult client in a sincere desire to help and drop the idea that you always have to win. This isn’t easy to do – believe me, it is very difficult for me as I like winning and winning is a lot more fun than losing.

Work harder to help others and be a “giver” rather than a “taker”. You will find that your successes become more consistent, and it is very difficult for clients or other managers in your company to create conflict with you when you are genuinely doing things that helps them.

It all starts with you as the IT manager. Don’t expect your client to take the first step. If there is a bad relationship, it’s up to you to fix it. You won’t fix it by fighting and trying to get the upper hand so that you end up winning. You may win the battle but the real issue is to have a positive long term business relationship where everyone wins. We are the ones who must reach out to the other party.

The company’s employees I referred to know why they exist. Their operation exists to help their clients do a better job through the technology and services being provided by the company. It is a culture that starts with senior management and is reinforced by every manager in the company.

This doesn’t mean there are no problems to deal with; they have their fair share to be sure. But the impressive thing is that they are focused on doing what’s right by the client and taking the extra step to ensure the work gets done in quality manner. That means working together.

In every company there are organizations that have natural conflicts with one another as they do their job. In many cases, operational units need more than their IT organization can provide. Frustration builds and barriers are built between the organizations. As managers, we have to recognize these tendencies and prevent our organizations from working against one another.

What can we do to create a cooperative culture ?

• Be a “giver”.

• Develop employee performance plans and reward your people for behavior that “gives” rather than “takes”.

• Reach out to department managers you are having conflict with. Develop a mutual respect for each others role and work toward the common good of the client. Most of us are reasonable when we encounter genuine approaches from people trying to work together.

• Lead by example. Your people will follow your lead. Be aware of the impact you have by your action, comments, and behavior.

• Seek senior management’s help in supporting activities that reinforce a cooperative spirit. They can mandate that everyone work together, but that won’t make it happen. However, their proactive support and positive reinforcement can help make it a reality.

• Realize that changing culture takes time. Be persistent and give the change time to happen.

• Seek win-wins and realize that it’s more important for your client to win the early issues as long as you both can win in the long run.

Help create a cooperative spirit in your organization to start with and extend it out to other departments in your company. Lead by example and coach your employees on the benefits of helping one another.

One of the expressions I have used a lot is, “We will all be successful together; none of us will be successful individually.”

Teamwork is built on cooperative spirit.

Help others every day and you will find that they will begin helping you become more successful than you might believe possible. I can attest that in my personal life and business, the more I help others the more I seem to succeed.

There are many situations where you need to validate the facts before running with unsubstantiated information. It will keep you out of trouble, will prevent you from making big mistakes, and will keep the mud off your face.

I’ve had to learn some of these things the hard way. In fact, anyone got a clean washcloth so I can wipe my face?

Seriously though, here are a few areas to consider getting your facts straight before acting:

A.  Hiring people –  Always verify the resume information. Anyone can create a great looking resume.

B.  Complaints about people –  Bickering among employees is going to happen. Be sure you verify the specific issues before taking action; you may find that the circumstances are misstated or that there is misunderstanding of the facts.

C.  Selecting vendor products and services –  Verify what the vendor is telling you, especially for mission critical functionality or capability. Their customers will be able to shed light on whether the Vendor can deliver and how well they support their client. Ask for more than just two or three happy clients to talk to. Ask to talk to unhappy clients as well; they may tell you things that help you become a successful client of the Vendor.

D.  Complaints about clients –  Your employees may complain about external clients or company departments. Unless you know the specifics beneath their complaints and have an opportunity to verify these issues really exist, it is premature to try to implement corrective action. I’ve seen too many situations where the IT staff needed to make an improvement or change to allow the client to work with them effectively.

E. “Senior management doesn’t want that !” –  There are often situations of the past that were issues where senior management required certain things that no longer exist in today’s environment of the company. What often happens is that the “rumor” that senior management “doesn’t want that” continues to perpetuate itself. An example is that I  was in a company where everyone understood that senior management did not allow an overhead paging system. However, when the CEO was asked about it, he replied, “That was when our entire office was one small floor of people and we did not want to interrupt client visits with overhead pages, etc. Today, we are on multiple floors, even in different buildings. If implementing a paging system for our support units helps us support our clients better, then we should implement it by all means.”

F. Client complaints about IT – You need to be careful about taking complaints about IT from a client as 100% solid fact. I joined a company once where several managers in the corporate office suggested I needed to fire one of the IT employees. After looking into the situation, the issue was that there was a significant lack of resource to support our client needs, , , it was not at all a problem with this resource. Once we got the resource capacity in line with the client need, the complaints about this particular employee went away.

The point
The message with all of this is that you need to validate the facts, get specific input to analyze, etc. before taking action. Issues can be very misleading until you get underneath them. You may also find that it is well off the mark due to misinterpretation, a lack of doing the necessary work to discover the real facts of the issue, or even a prejudice or emotional feeling that is coming from the source of the information.

All I can tell you is that when you conduct an IT assessment, you have to listen to the message everyone delivers, but verify the facts before deciding on any action. It will help you be far more successful, , , and “keep the mud off your face”.