Is IT Support Helping or Hindering Your Business?
Does your company have an effective technical support system in place? For many companies, the impact of IT support on business is often overlooked. Regardless of whether your IT support exists primarily internally for employees or externally for customers, the impact it has on your business is greater than you might think. How, then, do you know if your organization’s technical support is contributing to your success rather than to your detriment?
A recent white paper published by the Service Excellence Research Group (ServiceXRG) discussed the growing but marginally noticed connection between technical support and the success of a business. The solution, the research group simply suggests, is quantifying your IT support’s impact with measurable metrics and indicators.
To do this, ServiceXRG recommends taking the following steps:
- Align metrics and indicators with overall business objectives. In other words, use clearly-defined organizational goals to help determine where IT support is affecting your business.
- Obtain executive buy-in. If executives aren’t willing to accept the results and their implications, measuring the impact of IT support is a pointless endeavor.
- Establish data collection and analysis techniques. Knowing what you want to measure and doing it effectively are two completely different tasks.
- Set realistic targets. There’s no point in setting goals you can’t possibly achieve.
- Align performance incentives and appraisal programs. If improvements need to be made, give employees appropriate incentives to make or maintain them.
By allocating time and resources toward measuring the impact of your tech support, you’ll be better suited to make any necessary adjustments. And now that you have an idea how to effectively measure your IT support, our next post will detail the steps your organization can take to more effectively execute your technical support systems.
[photo: tidonation]
Additional Resources:
Information Visibility: Making IT Effective
The Cost of IT Failure: Is Your Business at Risk?
How are your IT consultants stacking up?
Tags: IT Help Desk, IT support, Support, technical support, The Service Excellence Research Group
December 16th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
IT Services Info & News | Ascensha » Blog Archive » Is IT Support Helping or Hindering Your Business?…
Does your company have an effective technical support system in place? For many companies, the impact of IT support on business is often overlooked. Regardless of whether your IT support exists primarily internally for employees or externally for custo…