In the 4th blog of this 5 part series, lets talk about assurance. In my last update, we spoke about delivery and all aspects of managing the outcomes. Now we actually have to prove through action and not just history, that we can do what we said we always said we could.
As always, we like to start with a definition, both woolly and more to the point!
1) A procedure or set of procedures intended to optimize performance and provide management guidance …or
2) Checking things are OK, and taking action if they aren't!
Hindsight is a useful yet annoying way of trying to ensuring future projection of delivery is optimized. Too often we see projects in IT whereby process improvement is top of the agenda, and results in a massive overhaul and consumption of time to solve what was an anomaly or an unpredictable situation. Service organizations often want to set the bar very high, and there is nothing wrong with that, however do not invest enough into the delivery capability to provide such outcomes. Often times, being a 3 or 3.5 (on a scale of 1-5) might be more than good enough. End users expectations are managed and the time taken to complete a request is reasonable. Wouldn't that be a nice situation to be in? Consider the opposite of pushing to be a level 5, asking for more time, money and resource, to deliver services at light speed, when in reality they never were requested to be that way. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the service provider has to put a stake in the ground as to what good looks like, and more importantly is achievable, work together with the end user and business users to ensure expectations are met, and then execute to those targets to keep the balance right.
Learning from past mistakes is a bitter pill to swallow, however it can show a level of awareness and humility that we don't always get things right all the time. The key to this is owning up to them, and showing the improvement, not just the plan or trying to brush it under the carpet. Bad things happen, its technology and has provided a mountain of jobs for years and will continue to do so, as it routinely goes wrong or breaks down. How you respond and react and learn is more important in my mind! Ensuring a consistent outcome, demonstrating it, and exceeding it are guaranteed ways that your customers will want to come back time and time again, but also offer you the chance to provide additional and more services. Trust is earned not given, and service providers have to demonstrate a consistent delivery but also transparency into what they provide, how they provide it and sometimes where they have weaknesses. Shock news - not all Service Providers are perfect and get it right every time…well, apart from Service Now of course but one could be judged as being biased.
I recently had an experience that had the potential to go very wrong indeed. As many of you know, my time is spent on airlines frequently all over this thing we call the world, and there is a massive gap in service levels everywhere I go. Some airlines pride themselves on delivering inch perfect service levels and the highest customer satisfaction, but should something not go quite to plan, chaos ensures. Other airlines who are maybe not so high on the luxury scale, but more than perfectly adequate in terms of comfort and service, but offer significantly more routes take a slightly different approach. Things go wrong, however the training kicks in instantly and the problems are dealt with in the most effective way possible, without over committing. Knowing this and having experienced it, give me the assurance that if issues were to arise again, then I have a very high level of confidence and knowledge that these guys won't panic, have the right people to handle any issue, but also the capacity and resources to ensure the ultimate outcome I get is the one I asked for originally. (Any airlines reading this and want the insider knowledge, you know where to find me!)
So, why do we try and set ridiculously lofty goals and assurances when we know in reality, if we are being honest and transparent, the ability to meet them is going to be a stretch or yet another heroic effort. I am seeing more and more service organizations go to market for the more commoditized services than ever before, as there is little to know value in the day to day responsibility for them, even though ultimately accountable. In doing so, they are getting the assurances from external and 3rd party providers who do this and this only. It limits risk, often reduces cost but drives up customer satisfaction in many, not all, cases. These same precious resources are then freed up to utilize the SME skills they have to deliver high value and often complex services which can be long running or costly at times.
My fifth and final blog will focus on how we measure, trend and predict these services….
(Note: amazing how I never mentioned the dreaded SLA this whole time!)
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