How Technical Support Is Like a Pain in the Neck

that the IT organization was making to improve service. This might encourage some of the jaded, long-time business users to pay attention and look for service improvements.

A third step toward managing user expectations was making sure that the business executives were clear about the priority that they assigned their projects and assuring they understood and would communicate to their organization the service implications of not assigning a high priority to an initiative.

The organization has its work cut out for it, but these initiatives (among others) may help users recognize and appreciate improving service. Over time, this may help IT improve its reputation with its user base, hopefully leading to renewed appreciation of the service organization’s value that can be reflected in future budgets.

The next time someone says that tech support is a pain in the neck, remind him that it really is. “When it works well, no one notices, but when it doesn’t work people really pay attention.”