(27-May-10) What comes first when IT departments strive to develop customer-focused organizations? Is it buy-in from top management or the software tool?
At George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., the two concepts work hand-in-glove. Top IT management sees to it that the IT staff receives customer service training (see the sidebar below), and BMC Remedy Service Desk Express keeps them organized so everyone is on the same page.
Teresa Gibbons, support center manager for the university’s IT Unit, says that in the past, users were supported in a somewhat haphazard manner.
“A customer may have called or e-mailed a particular technician or engineer that they had worked with in the past to ask for help,” Gibbons says. “The question may or may not have been one that the technician could answer, and different people may have given different answers. Requests weren’t always tracked, so we didn’t know if we had responded to the customer.”