Let’s talk about ITXM learnings. Many of us love lists of practical insights and help. There’s no reason why this isn’t the case for experience management too. Or, more precisely, for IT experience management (ITXM).
So please keep reading for 17 experience management learnings I’ve had working with Bright Horse customers.
This article via @BrightHorseEMEA shares 17 pieces of practical insights & advice related to IT Experience Management. #ITXM #ITSM Share on X17 ITXM learnings
The following 17 ITXM learnings
- IT organizations must understand that everybody at work has an experience every day. Everyone IT interacts with has some form of experience (experience of IT as a whole, the IT team, the individuals performing a task, or a product or a service).
The critical question that IT teams need to ask themselves is whether they want to design that experience and give employees the best possible outcome (considering their constraints, resources, and budget) or do they want to let it happen by accident. This is one of the key ITXM learnings. - Customer satisfaction (CSAT) data typically ignores a large proportion of an IT environment. It only comes from the people who have had an IT service desk ticket resolved, and we know that more than 50% of issues go unreported.
This issue means that CSAT data cannot be statistically valid. If we rely on CSAT data alone, we only listen to a niche portion of the organization, not the entire population. ITXM or experience data helps to overcome this. - Typically CSAT data has a low response rate. In my experience, I see CSAT response rates between 5-15%. So, not only is this data not statistically valid (as it is only coming from a niche portion of the population), but it’s also only a tiny percentage of that niche population. This insight is not good enough to base IT improvement decisions on.
- Properly run, captured experience data and ITXM learnings will tell an IT organization where people are having productivity issues. Many IT organizations have been surprised when analyzing experience data as they realize they have been trying to fix the wrong things.
- Service level agreements (SLAs) are helpful as they provide a quantitative measure of operational data. They are good at telling us what to do and how well to do it. For example, pick up the phone in under 30 seconds, respond to a Priority 1 ticket in 15 minutes, or keep a server up 99% of the time. The issue is they were never designed to measure experience, or for ITXM, so it is no surprise that they don’t.
- Some SLAs do impact experience. For example, not picking up a phone when someone calls or not resolving incidents on time is highly likely to lead to a poor experience. If you have not got these elements of ITSM at a Control level (CMMI), then experience data will just tell you what you should already know – you are delivering a poor experience. Once you are under control, we can use certain experience-impacting SLAs to explain why people feel the way they do using ITXM learnings and insights.
- I know all about standing in front of customers showing them a completely green performance dashboard, where we had achieved all our SLAs, and thinking this would be a good meeting.
Only to be told that, although we were picking up the phone and resolving tickets on time, we were not delivering a good experience. We were not being proactive. We were not educating employees on better ways to use IT. We were not improving their situation.
We were doing what was right for our contract, but this was not delivering the customer’s desired outcomes. We had to change the situation fast, and I quickly learned how to move a watermelon dashboard to a kiwi dashboard using ITXM. - A kiwi dashboard is green on the outside (like a watermelon), as it is essential to achieve the right SLAs/key performance indicators (KPIs). But of equal importance (if not more important) is ensuring people are happy with what we are doing and giving them the outcomes they need to do their jobs. This is the green inside too.
- The worst thing you can tell a customer/end-user of IT is that you kept the server up 95% of the time if, when they wanted to use it, it was down! Most end-users do not care about uptime – they care about outages.
- Microsoft once told me a great ITXM learnings statistic – 54% of their customers have a higher expectation of them this year than last year. This statistic cannot be exclusive to Microsoft; probably circa 50% of all IT customers (end users) have a higher expectation of IT this year than last year. Their expectations rise because of advances in IT, particularly personal IT at home – they want the same experience at work that they can get at home.
- Bright Horse believes you can never truly understand how well IT performs unless you know how people feel. IT performance should be measured based on the people’s experiences consuming it. It’s a foundation of ITXM.
- Alongside business needs such as security, IT should be about enabling others to do their jobs – it should not be IT for IT’s sake. Of course, technology does get complex, but to ensure successful uptake and use of IT, we need to ensure that the touchpoints with our customers remain simple. End-users of IT only care about things such as:
- Does this technology do what I want it to do?
- Is it available when I need it on the device I need it on?
- Is it quick to access?
- Is it easy to use?
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is a useful and growing IT area, but it needs to be applied carefully and with experience in mind. Making something cheaper or faster does not necessarily mean improving IT enablement. It often has the opposite effect – people just get to the wrong answer more quickly!
For example, using AI to resolve support tickets is useful as long as the issue gets resolved, but many companies are using AI to deflect tickets away from the service desk to cut costs. This approach can often lead to lower productivity as people are “down” for longer and become disengaged. ITXM helps with this. - The best way to introduce AI-enabled capabilities is to use ITXM learnings or experience data to sign off on new initiatives. Before commencing new AI projects, IT departments should ask themselves, “How will this new AI initiative improve the experience and outcomes of end-users?” If that question can be answered in full, with measures, then the initiative is probably good. If you cannot answer the question, question whether you should do it.
- The pandemic made experience management or ITXM a boardroom issue. Advanced IT departments are keeping it on the table by looking at all digital transformation projects through the lens of experience data.
- Highly engaged workforces are 21% more profitable (according to Gallup research), and successful IT departments understand this. As the business calls for more digital transformation, they prioritize projects based on where they believe the experience will be best improved. This focus drives faster and more effective business outcomes and makes companies more successful.
- To understand the impact of experience and ITXM learnings, you need context. A proper experience management framework not only identifies the experience issues but also the causes of them. If IT departments can understand what people feel and why they feel that way, they can solve issues correctly and make IT more successful.
Hopefully, these 17 ITXM learnings are helpful. If you want to discuss these or other ITXM points, please contact me via LinkedIn.
If you liked this ITXM learnings article, the following experience management and ITXM articles might be helpful to ITSM pro too.
Further Reading
Please use the website search capability to find more helpful ITXM and ITSM articles on topics related to motivating team members, creating competitive advantage, continual improvement, employee satisfaction, teh role of HR teams, increased employee engagement, and customer experience (CX).
Neil Keating
As co-founder and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Bright Horse, Neil leads all the experience education and consulting engagements and works with a diverse range of organisations, including well known multi-national brands, Managed Service Providers, and companies across a range of vertical sectors.
With a wealth of experience in IT Services, Neil is an expert in how best to measure, manage and improve the employee experience of IT through the development of the right XLAs, XLMs and XMOs.