Service culture

Perspective on Service Culture
Anand Nirmalkumar Page 1 of 15
1. IT Transformation
1.1. Objective
“Culture” plays critical role in defining the organizational capability and hence becomes core of organizational
transformation. Most of the times, “Culture” is not taken into consideration while translating transformation goals into
actions making it as the main cause of transformation failures.
“Transformation – A Perspective on Service Culture” brings out the need to have “culture” as focal point of transformation
and how that can be influenced in an IT organization.
1.2. Why Transformation?
Evolution is keeping living beings to adapt to shifting environmental demands instead of becoming extinct. Everything that
is alive is either growing & evolving or dying. Similarly organizations have to continuously evolve by design to stay fit in the
ever changing market. Organization evolution is about making fundamental changes in how business is conducted and is
referred as Business transformation. Transformation is not an option but necessity for organizations to stay relevant.
Conducting business is an uncertain journey to an uncertain destination and exploring / exploiting every opportunity along
the journey. Fundamental goal of an IT is no more to run the business alone but to empower business to do better every
day. IT is not only a success factor for survival and prosperity, but also an opportunity to differentiate and achieve
competitive advantage. Hence IT Transformation becomes core of Business Transformation and the differentiation keeps
shrinking.
Like Evolution, Transformation is a continuous journey and not a destination…
This article helps in creating closed loop control system in IT organization to set the pace of this continuous journey.
1.3. IT Transformation Drivers
Key stakeholder needs from IT organization are:
 Provide secure, reliable & agile service to clients (business)
 Continually improve the business of IT to help clients to do their business better
 Evolve from a utility service provider to a trusted business partner that drives true business value and maximizes it
 Stay relevant as learning IT organization

Stakeholder needs influence the goals:
 Standardization of Service Management principles to make the service best in class and consistent
 Help clients in improving their quality and efficiency of decision-making by enabling data access necessary to
perform business, and that data is Single Source of Truth across the organization
 Through adoption of right technology, deliver integrated services under Unified Architecture to create an edge for
business over competition with higher ROI on technology
 Achieve higher level of service reliability through Preventive and Predictive Management
 Manage gained Knowledge efficiently and continue transformation journey through Continual Improvement
1.4. 3Ps of Transformation
When you translate Transformation goals into actions, the actions need to be synchronous between fundamental elements
called “3Ps of Transformation” – People, Process & Products.
People
People transformation starts in induction & training to skill and re-skill. A person, joining IT organization, knows the industry
standard Process & Technology but doesn’t know how they have been adapted into the organization. More importantly
educate people on the organization culture. “People Localization” is the cornerstone of successful IT organization.
Schools are meant to give knowledge on how to acquire knowledge. Similarly induction trainings are not about how to work
but how you learn to work / survive in that organization / culture. While inducting people, there is enormous focus on
equipping a person technically / functionally and less focus on culture. The new hire into the organization is the place to
groom changes to create that right culture.
An important aspect in people transformation is not to disparage the past. Rather stress moving into future and show them
the better life in the future state to convince on the necessity of change. John Kotter
[1]
approach to change management (is
widely accepted and is adapted in Governance of Enterprise IT in COBIT 5
[2]
) explains that a sense of urgency needs to be
developed around the need for change in order to establish initial motivation in the organization.

Process
Standardized Process to measure and improve the business of IT. There are good frameworks available on service
management principles which aids in process transformation.
Out of the popular frameworks, COBIT 5
[3]
provides a comprehensive framework that assists enterprises in achieving their
objectives for the governance and management of enterprise IT. It helps enterprises create optimal value from IT by
maintaining a balance between realizing benefits and optimizing risk levels & resource use. COBIT 5 enables IT to be
governed and managed in a holistic manner for the entire enterprise, taking in the full end-to-end business and IT
functional areas of responsibility, considering the IT-related interests of internal and external stakeholders. COBIT 5 is
generic and useful for enterprises of all sizes, whether commercial, not-for-profit or in the public sector.
Usually the organization unit which defines the process is separate from the organization unit which follows the process. It
is always good practice to rotate certain percentage of people between these two organization units regularly to improve
the alignment between these two units.
Products
Choice of right technology Products defines the future roadmap of IT. The question is whether it fits into existing & future
eco-system of the organization to create value. Critical aspect in acquiring technology is to understand and implement
holistic Benefits Realization framework. It is not about implementing a project or acquiring new software but about creating
value to the organization. The Information Paradox
[4]
discusses in detail on the benefit realization framework and is an
excellent reference on this topic.
2. Service Culture
2.1. Why Culture
In IT transformation – major effort and challenge is not in implementing the technology but in implementing the change.
Enterprise value management is about recognizing that we are investing in change and the management of that change.
About 30 to 50% of the effort in major change programs is managing the process of change itself and specifically managing
the people aspects of change. This is often given cursory attention with insufficient resources. When there is a budget /
schedule pressure, this is the first thing to go.
The strongest force, in my view, is “Inertia”. Changing people is not only difficult but also near to impossible. The only way
is to motivate people to the need for change and they change. Every human is selfish. That is our design – “What is in it for
me?” People engagement needs to take advantage of this nature. Sell the need for change – why is the status quo not an
option and how the failure to change will impact them individually. It is not enough to sell the big picture of change &
benefit to organization but to sell the benefit due to change to each individual – What is in it for her / him? You need to
make people understand “Why (do we exist)?”– The value and purpose of the organization. “What (to do)?” and “How (to
do)?” part will be the core execution and team will learn on their own and implement. Moreover “What” and “How” will
keep changing but not “Why” part.
To certain extend the differentiation on People, Process & Products among organizations, esp in IT, are diminishing. Same
types of People or even same People are available for competition. Industry standard Process is available to everyone to
adapt and/or adopt. Product vendors sell the same product to competition as well. Everyone have access to the same
technology and processes. So what can make a difference then? In my view, “Culture”, identity of an organization, makes
the difference.
The only true, lasting competitive advantage of any organization lies in the “Culture” of that organization.

Culture…the neglected part…
IT governance is about specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the
use of IT
[5]
. The continuous & dynamic IT governance is about creating that effective culture and managing it efficiently.
2.2. Critical Success Factor
IT organization operates in a multi stakeholder environment of same organization or from different organizations, like IT
service providers, product vendors, etc. The efficiency of the IT organization depends in utilizing other organizations that
provide the best in class required capability rather than building every capability within IT organization. The single goal of all
stakeholders is providing the best in-class service to the clients.
Engage the best in class for each job. Engage the most capable and effective at the right price. It is no longer an enterprise’s
ownership of capabilities that matters, but rather its ability to control and make the most of critical capabilities, whether or
not they reside on the enterprise.
The cornerstone for partnership with clients is the Quality of Service. At times the overall behavior is problem focused
rather than business (clients) focused. The Quality of Service is not just about solving the problem but taking care of client
needs. Quality should go beyond structure and process to behavior of individuals. Service is not an activity but behavior.
Organization is the one which does extra-ordinary things with ordinary people. Common behavior of the individuals in the
organization defines the “Organizational Culture”. Service is people centric and right culture is the success factor.
In Build To Last
[6]
, the authors argue on the success story of Wal-Mart.
“Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) valued change, experimentation, and constant improvement. But he didn’t just preach these
values; he instituted concrete organizational mechanisms to stimulate change and improvement. Personnel operate in an
environment where change is encouraged. For example, if a store associate makes suggestions regarding [merchandising or
cost savings ideas], these ideas are quickly disseminated.

Whereas Walton concentrated on creating an organization that would evolve and change on its own, Ames leaders dictated
all changes from above and detailed in a book the precise steps a store manager should take, leaving no room for
initiative.”
No doubt that all process need to be documented well and it has to be followed diligently across organization. That is
hygiene. The success is in continuous Process redesign (Make it efficient – improve by changing flow or part of the process)
and Process reengineering (Effective – a complete elimination of the existing process and construction of a brand new one).
Irrespective of what process is adopted in the organization, that process can be corrected or can be replaced with right
process if there is appropriate continuous improvement culture.
IT policy & process framework needs to be based on self-heal & self-construct principle and to be managed like any other
critical business process. All design issues applicable for business process engineering should also be applied to IT
Governance.
The only way to win is to make the client win and that has to go deep in the organization. You need to create IT
organization where everyone lives and breathes client service to make the client win. That is the only change required.
Need to create a culture in IT Organization where every individual Collaborate to build on each other’s strengths for the
common goal to make the client win in every instance, makes appropriate level of Communication to avoid surprises at all
levels and have high level of Commitment.
Critical Success Factor is an action that must go right if business goals are to be attained. Building that winning “Service
Culture” is a critical success factor for every IT organization.
2.3. Goals & Metrics
“What gets measured, gets done” ‐ Tom Peters
Sustaining the right service culture becomes complex in a multi stakeholder environment. All standards provide the
process. Little, if anything, is said about culture. Combination of practices and supporting tools has to be embedded in
organization to improve the culture and behavior of individuals.
People Goals & Objectives alignment to IT Goals
You need to have holistic reward & recognition aligning to Organization Vision. To get where you want to go (vision), make
it as easy as you can, by defining precisely where you want to end up (Goals). Goals are intermediate milestones of the
larger vision. Looking at entirety people can easily be overwhelmed. It is crucial to show incremental milestones along the
path. Breaking change into manageable chunks gives people the confidence that they can accomplish what is required. The
only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
SMARTER Criteria
[7]
gives guidelines for goal setting.
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-Bound
Evaluate
Reward

Specific: Goals need to be clear, unambiguous, well defined and not generic. It needs to be explicit without any room for
mis-interpretation. Goal need to articulate what is expected and the purpose clearly. A specific goal will usually answer the
five 'W' questions: What, Why, Who, Where, Which.
Measurable:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”‐ Peter Drucker
People need to know how far they have gone and how far they need to go to keep their motivation level high. Performance
management is critical for organization and people. Performance management need to be based on comparative
achievement based on data and not by subjective means.
Achievable: A vision can be imaginative / unheard of which the organization wants to achieve in long term horizon but a
goal is something that can (need to) be achieved in a short timeframe. Higher aspiration is definitely good for the
organization but setting unachievable goal will lead to breakdown in the system. Not meeting a target is as good as not
having a target. You need to have optimum higher target and that has to be met within that timeframe. Self-Pity and lack of
confidence are dangerous negative spiral for any organization. Having unreasonable targets and not achieving targets for
few cycles will alleviate these fears greatly in the team / organization. Set the target for each goal in such a way that at least
10 to 20% people are able to achieve / overachieve. Success breeds success. Revise the target at regular intervals to higher
level.
Relevant: The trick of the trade is in splitting the IT organization goal to lower level so that it is relevant to what everyone
does day-to-day. Goals of CIO (IT organization) to be divided appropriately to next level and then to next level and so on.
The goals & objectives of each member in IT need to align to overarching IT goal, directly or indirectly, in such a way that
every individual has to just achieve his / her goal which will elevate them to next level so as the IT organization to next level
of maturity. For e.g. to achieve higher client satisfaction, service managers can have a goal on satisfaction score with a
threshold to achieve. While translating this to a support staff, the goal should be in the everyday work the support staff is
doing instead of setting the same goal of satisfaction score. Support staff can have a goal to meet response, say 95% of the
time for the requests / tickets. If every support staff meets the response time, the satisfaction score will improve
automatically. For a developer setting a goal of on-budget project completion is meaningless, even though a developer is
contributing to that goal. Need to identify factors which are in complete control within developer influence and set goals in
those parameters. Developer can have a goal on less error rate. Less error leads to less rework and hence helps in achieving
on-budget completion. Job description of every role in the organization needs to be clear to everyone and the goals need to
be relevant to the job description.
Time-Bound: Goals are, in simple term, intermediate milestones of vision. Goals are the means to indicate the headway the
organization making. Success along the way motivates people to stay the course. Hence people need to see success in
meeting goals in regular and short internals to keep up the motivation. If a goal takes more time to achieve, people will
develop fatigue so it is crucial to split them into intermediate goals with a cycle time of 6 months or 1 year.
Evaluate: It is important that the goals & objectives of every employee in IT to have performance parameters aligning to big
picture but that list should be concise at every level. There are several hundred things to improve but there should be
judgment on what are the top things that will bring immediate & maximum benefits to the organization. An organization
put 31 parameters for mid-managers as part of their appraisal. No one knows how many managers achieved all of them, if
at all there is one! It is no brainer that the approach failed. There is a reason why nature has restricted it to five fingers but I
call it as “Golden Rule of 5” – At any point in time, target not more than 5 things to improve / achieve. Anything beyond 5 is
difficult for people to remember. It is better not to set more than 5 goals at every level. If you woke a person from sleep at
2 am in the morning and asked to specify the goals, would he / she be able to respond without a pause? If the answer is not
yes, then there is more work to do. You can revise targets at regular timeframe to higher level till it reaches industry best in
class. At that point in time, you can decide to concentrate on other parameters or continue the effort to improve the same
parameter over and above.

Reward: There needs to be a holistic rewarding / incentivizing mechanism for overachieving whatever expected out of a
person. While rewarding mechanism is an accepted concept, handling non-performance is either missing or not clear in
most of the organizations. Handling non-performance with strong will is as important as rewarding performance and it is
not a choice.
Goals help in directing people efforts to goal-relevant activities. People become more likely to work through setbacks if
pursuing a goal. Goals can lead individuals to develop and change their behavior. Behavior of majority of the crowd defines
the culture. In effective performance management approaches, goals & metrics are not just used for assigning
accountabilities or to comply with reporting requirements. They are used to create and facilitate actions to improve
performance and, therefore, governance of IT.
2.4. Health Indicators
IT organization exists to provide the best service to (business) clients. The goal is not only to provide good experience to
clients, but to offer them an experience that exceeds their expectations with consistency. It is not enough to provide what
clients want now but to collaborate extensively with them to define the future needs as well. Voice of the client is that the
“SLA is green but unhappiness exist”. SLAs are to some extend retrospective and you need a mechanism to shift to
Preventive & Predictive management of service and customer satisfaction.
The difficult part in problem solving is “Understanding the Problem”. Most of the times, the real problem is the awareness
of the existence of a problem. We usually use the outcome measures (Lagging Indicators). We believe things are fine till we
see unexpected outcome making us realize the problem. We need early warning mechanism to move to proactive /
preventive management. We need to keep finger on the pulse. “Health Indicators” is a way to manage by data, not by gut.
They are leading indicators or performance drivers.
The objective is to provide a perspective on how a set of “Health Indicators” can be effectively used to improve service
culture. They are neither exhaustive nor to replace SLAs. They are illustrative of leading indicators in operations with less
influence in build. These Health Indicators are to illustrate how service culture can be influenced in IT organization to set a
direction of Service Culture journey. Healthy metrics system needs to have right mix of Leading Indicators (Performance
Drivers) and Lagging Indicators (Outcome measures).
Perform the day to day operation with appropriate accountability and quality.
Transform the behavior to Preventive & Predictive management.
Lead by improving the way people work today and improve every day.
Nurture the culture.

Perform
The way of life is “Silent Running”. Most of the SLAs / KPIs help in measuring what has happened and how is the
performance of overall service. When you are on your toes, you forget what is pending, leading to dissatisfaction. IT service
delivery team needs to adapt to practices which take care of activities having dependency on others and every member
carries out diligent follow up on pending items. What gets followed up gets done. While the system is stable, the key thing
is to avoid introduction of faults into the system through changes.

Backlog Management
Measurement Criteria Description Behavior Objective Measured
Rate of tickets not closed
within 10 calendar days
The percentage of tickets
which are not closed within 10
calendar days out of the total
number of tickets that have
been created / logged in the
ticketing system during that
period.
Practices like daily open ticket
ageing report drive the team
to take action on time, making
the team more responsive.
An increasing trend
indicates that the output
of the team is not
matching to the business
needs and continuous
increasing trend may lead
to service failures in the
future.
Number of tickets not
closed within 30
calendar days & not
having respective
stakeholder approval /
agreement to keep it
open or pending
If a ticket is not closed (in
open, pending or in any other
status) in 30 calendar days,
there should be sufficient
communication & agreement
with respective stakeholder.
Measure the absolute number
of tickets which are not closed
in 30 days & justification not
agreed with respective
stakeholder.
Drives weekly operational
reviews, forces the team to
discuss / communicate on the
tickets that are not closed &
about to cross 30 days mark
with relevant stakeholder to
agree the reason to keep it
open along with the next
review date. Similarly support
team will review all tickets for
which the next review date
falls in that week.
Weekly status report will have
respective sections to capture
this data and drive appropriate
conversation.
Guides the team to follow up
regularly, collaborate with
stakeholders, other teams and
vendors proactively.
More tickets in this
category indicate that
regular operational
reviews are not effective.
On the other hand if there
are more justifications not
agreed, then the situation
may lead to relationship
issues with clients.
Change Management
Number of emergency
changes
Number of Emergency
Changes released into
production platform.
Higher number of emergency
changes is more work for the
team and there is self-interest for
team to reduce those numbers.
Team will improve on planning
and will engage proactively with
stakeholders to improve the
overall quality of asset(s).
An increasing number of
emergency changes indicate
that the quality of asset(s) is
substandard or change
management process
requiring review.

Rate of change
acceptance
The percentage of change
request that got accepted
in business acceptance
testing and moved to
operation.
This indicator will drive
meticulous planning and
compliance to quality process.
Lower percentage of
acceptance indicates poor
planning / evaluation of
changes and continuous trend
may lead to major disruption.
Number of high
severity incidents due
to changes /
enhancements
introduced into the
system in the past 30 /
60 / 90 days.
Identified during RCA of
Severity (Priority) 1 or 2
whether the root cause is
the change introduced
into the system in the
recent past.
Improves quality consciousness
of teams involved in introducing
the change along with improving
planning.
Helps team to become more
preventive by avoiding issues.
Few instances of major
incidents due to changes can
be fixed through respective
RCA. But a continuous trend
indicates quality issues and
may lead to major disruption.
It forces team to relook at
change management process
for potential improvements.
Transform
Knowledge Management helps in improving overall responsiveness of the team, avoiding re-inventing of the wheel and
avoiding human errors through standard operating procedures. The cause of problem may be direct cause, contributing
cause and root cause. While fixing a problem, every cause needs to be addressed and addressing each cause will have set of
actions. Avoiding reoccurrence is a major step towards preventive management. Creating a culture of completing a task
100% in all aspects is fundamental to transformation. Few indicators which will help in driving this behavior.
Problem Management
Number of repeat high
severity incidents
occurred for which RCA
conducted & measures
put in place to avoid
reoccurrence
RCA will reveal whether such
incidents have happened in the
past and whether preventive
measures have been put in place.
RCA and corrective action tracking
centrally will enable this analysis.
Creates a culture that
closure is a Boolean
and nothing in
between.
Higher number indicates either
poor quality of root cause
analysis or identified actions
non-closure. Continuous
increasing trend indicates lack
of depth of technical /
functional knowledge of the
team.
Number of proactive
problem management
initiatives implemented.
Proactive problem management
occurs by reviewing all tickets on a
periodic basis to analyze trends
and recurring Incidents, to identify
problems that might otherwise be
missed.
Sets the preventive
culture. Saved effort
can be invested for
further improvement
initiatives.
Measure of proactive nature
of team in reducing
reoccurrence.
Number of RCA actions
that has not been
followed up for update
Conducting RCAs and identifying
the causes and actions to address
the cause is only a starting point. It
Drives the behavior of
formal tracking of RCAs
and corrective actions
Increasing trend indicates that
the situation may lead to
major service / business

or closure as per the
agreed follow up or
closure date
requires diligent focus in following
up all involved stakeholders to
close their respective actions to
ensure 100% completion of the fix
to the problem. Maintaining all
RCAs and respective actions
centrally will help in enabling the
implementation of this practice.
with regular review on
the progress.
disruption or lack of process to
complete identified RCA
actions.
Number of RCA actions
not logged centrally and
closed within 90
calendar days or not
having stakeholder
approval to keep the
action open / pending.
Knowledge Management
Number of instances
where KEDB (Known
Error DataBase) has not
been updated within
five calendar days from
the date issue reported /
identified.
Known Error Database is a
collection of all known errors
for which there is a
workaround and the
permanent fix is not yet
known or not yet applied.
Team can periodically review
known errors to explore
permanent fix.
Creates behavior to
adhere to the defined
process. By logging
workaround in KEDB at
the earliest will enable
helpdesk in applying the
workaround quicker to
improve FCR (first call
resolution) & client
satisfaction.
An increasing trend of
compliance to these parameters
indicates the process maturity
and shift to process dependent
service from people dependent
service.
Rate of tickets resolved
using knowledge articles
Maintaining KM / KEDB
articles centrally will enable
the team to avoid re-inventing
the wheel when similar issue
happens. It even helps in
moving some of the ticket
resolution to L1 Service Desk
Quantifies the benefits the
team gains through KM
which in turn motivates
them to contribute more
to KM. Saved effort can be
invested back to create
more knowledge articles,
creating positive spiral.
Rate of new tickets
(Incidents & SR tickets
not having KM article)
for which KM articles got
created
Creates a behavior to
identify more and more
tickets whose solution can
be documented to
improve MTTR (Mean
Time To Resolve)

Lead
Lead by Innovation and Continuous Service Improvements. The culture of everyone in the organization striving to work
more efficiently than yesterday is the key differentiator of Leader from Follower.
Incident Reduction
Continuous Service Improvements (CSI)
Number of Continuous
Service Improvements
proposed
Number of CSI proposed quarter
on quarter.
Once the process sets
in motion, it creates a
culture seeing
everything from an
angle of doing it better
which is contagious.
Continuous improving trend is
a measure of positive attitude
and enthusiasm in the team.
Number of Continuous
Service Improvements
Implemented
Number of CSI implemented
quarter on quarter.
Benefits realized
through Implementation
Quantify the benefits in terms of
Availability improvement /
Response & Resolution time
improvement / Cost saving / Ticket
Reduction
When the benefits are
quantified, all
stakeholders will be
able to appreciate the
initial effort investment
and will start
supporting the cause.
Number of value add
initiatives beyond BAU
(Business As Usual)
These are the initiatives where
client and IT engage on the
themes of business / IT roadmap.
Executive sponsors of both sides
have to identify a theme every
quarter where teams can
collaborate to identify next steps /
solution / ways to engage to
address particular business need.
This helps to improve
business and IT
collaboration beyond
operations which will
lead to better
appreciation of each
other, strengthening
partnership.
Measure of improved business
& IT alignment and
appreciation of each other
business.
Rate of reduction in high
severity Incidents
The percentage of high
severity incident reduction
month on month.
Creates a culture of
proactive / preventive
management which
makes the life of staff
easier and forward
looking.
Continuous trend indicates that
the quality of asset(s) is
improving.
Rate of ticket reduction The percentage of tickets
reduction month on month
Rate of first call
resolution
Percentage of Incidents
resolved at the Service Desk
at first call incident / issue.

Nurture
We need to create closed loop control system – Plan, Do, Check, Act – which will enable periodic feedback to the practice,
we live through. The only way to sustain the change is to nurture the change. We need to nurture the culture of adapting to
the best practices, process and comply to set standards. Customer Satisfaction is a reflection of team behavior and need
continuous focus on nurturing customer satisfaction.
Process Compliance
Rate of CMDB
(Configuration
Management Data
Base) data quality of all
critical Configuration
Items (applications /
assets)
It is expected that CMDB
gets updated for all changes
at the time of change. An
audit every quarter on the
quality of CMDB data for all
CI will reveal the compliance
ratio.
Team makes CMDB update
regularly or at least makes
them review once in a
quarter.
A CMDB is the cornerstone of IT
Service Management, providing a
centralized view of IT data that is
essential to deliver consistent,
reliable, effective, and efficient
service to business. CMDB data
quality is a key measure of
reliability.
Number of critical
incidents due to staff
movement, deficiency
in training or
documentation
Major incidents RCA will
bring out whether any cause
is related to deficiency in IT
staff skill, training, or
process, documentation.
Inculcating the right
service culture starts in
induction, training, setting
the right process &
adequately documenting.
Less service disruption due to
people change is a measure of
process oriented service rather
than people oriented service.
Rate of Process
Compliance
Two fold approach. 10% of
tickets need to be audited to
ascertain process compliance
in ticket resolution. Every
quarter there should be an
elaborate process audit
spanning across all parts of
services / process tenets.
Creates a culture of self-
heal. Helps in identifying
and fixing the areas where
defined practices / process
adaption is not working.
Also the new practices and
process will become part
of next audit cycle creating
closed loop control system.
Higher level of process compliance
is a measure of high adaptability
and positivity of the team.
Customer Satisfaction
Number of failure to
meet client
commitments beyond
SLAs.
Measure and monitor all
commitments / actions to clients.
There is a need for comprehensive
process to log all actions /
commitments and review them
regularly till closure. Many times
there are actions / commitments
agreed with clients but they are not
Voice of Customer says that SLA
is green but unhappiness exist.
Not only end results are
important but also the
experience matters a lot in client
service. Meticulous logging and
tracking makes the team more
responsible and responsive.
Complete
responsibility and
higher
responsiveness
builds credibility and
is a measure of
appreciation of
customer needs.

getting tracked meticulously leading
to dissatisfaction.
Failure to meet may be an
indication of scalability or
communication issue.
Number of business
complaints
Number of received complaints
which were accepted as justified. All
customer complaints need to be
maintained in centralized register.
Improves overall appreciation of
client needs by the team.
Less number of
complaints is an
indication of high
level of trust /
confidence on the
service.
Number of escalations
by client to IT or vice
versa
These are Level 1 or 2 or 3
escalations (as per standard
governance framework) to IT to
bring required attention on the issue
in hand. Escalation is not a bad thing
but not escalating at required time is
worse. There is a need to conduct
formal RCA to take action to fix the
issue in hand and to prevent such
issues in the future.
Drives the culture of bringing the
required management attention
to handle situations to restore
confidence. To err is human. The
escalation framework helps to
focus on the problem rather than
the person or IT as a whole.
Strengthens the partnership.
Makes both stakeholders to
strengthen the governance and
communication.
Less number of
escalations and very
low escalation level
upgrade (upgrading
lower level escalation
to higher level) is an
indication of good
governance.
360
0
Satisfaction
Survey
Satisfaction survey, minimum once
in six months. Satisfaction survey
needs to be 360
0
– every stakeholder
involved in the value chain need to
provide feedback to others which
needs to be formal, unbiased and if
possible should enable even
anonymous feedback. While client
gives feedback on IT, IT needs to
provide feedback on client. Similarly
if there is a service provider / vendor
to IT, even they need to give
feedback to IT / business and vice
versa. Many times, being at the
bottom of value chain, their voice
gets ignored, missing vast
opportunities for improvement.
Survey should include end
consumers / customers / business
partners who may be using the IT
assets directly or indirectly.
Formal feedback mechanism
creates closed loop control
system for self-heal.
Makes all stakeholders to be
more responsible and helps in
inculcating partnership behavior.
Proof of pudding is in
the eating. An
healthy two way
feedback across the
eco-system is an
indication of growing
partnership from
strength to strength
There is a subtle difference between complaint and escalation. Complaint is an expression of client dissatisfaction, even
though the task would have been completed within SLA – e.g. a ticket going for user clarification more than two times –

ideally should talk to the user if the clarification is not reached in two attempts. Escalation is a reflection of unacceptable
situation. There is nothing called bad feedback and every compliant is an opportunity to improve – that has to go deep in
the culture.
As they say, “Nature gave you one month and two ears. You should use them in that ratio”. 360
0
feedback is so powerful
that it matures every stakeholder into true partner. The efficiency of IT organization depends in utilizing other organizations
that provide the best in class required capability rather than building every capability within IT organization. The single goal
of all stakeholders is providing the best in-class service to the business / clients. With more and more off-the-shelf products
& solutions coming into the IT eco-system, it is NOT POSSIBLE for IT to ignore the contribution of other vendors / service
providers.
Build listening organization. When you open your ears, your eyes will open to see opportunity by far than you ever dreamed.
Goals and objectives can be based on these indicators which will help in driving right behaviour in the individual, leading to
right service culture in IT Organization.
3. Glossary
Clients: Those who conduct the business of organization and use or consume the services of IT organization on a day-to-day
basis.
Customers: Who buys the product / service of the organization; customers may also use the IT systems like online portal for
purchase, ATM machine etc.
4. References
1. Kotter, John; Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press.
2. COBIT 5: Figure 17: The Seven Phases of the Implementation Life Cycle.
3. COBIT 5: http://www.isaca.org/cobit/
4. Thorp, John; The Information Paradox: Realizing the Business Benefits of Information Technology.
5. Weill, Peter; Ross, Jeanne W. (2004-05-06). IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior
Results. Harvard Business Review Press.
6. Collins, Jim; Porras, Jerry I. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials).
7. SMART criteria: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SMART_criteria&oldid=600572756.

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