It's the service that counts
Customer service desks need more than just great technical skills - they need the expertise to provide great customer service too. For many organisations, ITIL is fast becoming the accepted standard for service desk training.
01 October 2004
Great customer service isn't just a question of learning how to say "do you want fries with that?" with a bigger and better smile. It helps you to better understand and resolve issues. It helps you to inspire confidence. It's what keeps customers coming back - and much more.
Of course, the needs and role of customer service is different from industry to industry. Within the IT industry, ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is by far and away the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world.
ITIL isn't a 'dreamed up' standard. It's the result of work undertaken in public and private sectors worldwide for over a decade. The best practice which forms ITIL represents hundreds of years' collective experience of thousands of IT professionals worldwide. The best-practice processes embedded in ITIL are supported by the British Standards Institution's standard for IT service management (BS 15000).
So what's it all about?
Better service is a good thing. Okay, that's obvious, but for IT service companies, or companies with their own IT department/service desk, it's very much a good thing. According to IT research company GartnerGroup, the overall impact of moving from no IT service management to a full adoption can reduce an organisation's total cost of ownership by as much as 48%. Take a deep breath and read that number again. In ROI terms, strong service management is one of the best initiatives you can undertake.
The successful introduction of improved IT service management, using ITIL, can deliver many highly desirable benefits, including:
- greatly improved return on investment from your IT spend.
- a reduction in those hidden costs which can increase total cost of ownership.
- the reduction of support incident costs.
- improved systems and applications uptime - resulting in improved productivity.
- more effective use of IT assets and infrastructure.
- significantly improved customer satisfaction.
- better morale within service delivery staff - and within customers, internal or external, who experience the service.
- reduced staff turnover.
- greatly improved IT team productivity and effectiveness.
ITIL isn't a flash-in-the-pan. Many leading organisations have adopted the best practices described in ITIL - these companies include Procter and Gamble, IBM, Caterpillar, Shell Oil, Boeing, and the US Internal Revenue Service. All of these companies have reported significant cost savings as a direct result of adopting ITIL. For example, in the US, Procter and Gamble achieved around $125 million in IT cost savings each year following the adoption of ITIL. That's nearly 10% of the company's annual IT budget!
ITIL isn't based on technology - though it is specifically aimed at IT service desks. ITIL focuses activity on service support and service delivery - and encompasses the business processes and disciplines needed to more efficiently deliver IT services. This non-technology approach is often cited as a key reason for ITIL gaining high-level sponsorship with many directors and senior executives.
ITIL service management training leads to a recognised worldwide accreditations, the ISEB Foundation Certificate in Service Management and the ISEB Managers' Certificate in IT Service Management.
e-academy can help you on the path to better service management. We are currently offering the three-day Foundation Certificate in Service Management course, which is designed to introduce people to ITIL. It provides an excellent introduction to those ITIL terminology and processes which are designed to deliver effective and efficient IT services.
For more information about this, other service management courses or ITIL in general, please call us on 0845 650 6500 or e-mail us.
