Hank Marquis did not write this article, Dr. M., his alter ego, wrote it. Dr. M. talks about the things IT managers like Hank think about and want to say, but never do. While Hank is a compassionate believer in the inspiring talents of IT staff, Dr. M. is cold and analytical. Where Hank sees extraordinary feats of achievement, Dr. M. sees inefficiency and risk.

Let me just come out and say it: “User opinion isn’t what should be most important to a service provider, and worrying about User satisfaction, is a waste of time and money.”

The term "User" describes the recipient of a service, a role that interacts with and consumes the service defined and paid for by a “Customer” role. In business Users often work for and report to Customers. For example, Sales Staff work for the VP of Sales, Truck Drivers work for the VP of Logistics, and so on. Users interact with IT applications and services to accomplish some business objective established by Customers. It should be the Customer whose opinion matters most to IT, not the User. Lots of trouble arises when IT loses focus on the Customer role, and tries to assume responsibilities outside of its corporate jurisdiction. We see these problems all the time – Service Desk staff delivering service "above and beyond", ill-advised efforts to "exceed expectations" and so on. Moreover, in the end, all these misguided labors usually result in unexpected consequences – usually making life in IT worse than it would be otherwise.

Consider what happens when self-motivated staff at the Service Desk focuses on "delighting Users" and routinely exceed agreed service levels as defined in Service Level Agreements, or SLAs. This can and does happen all the time – and usually because of staff works weekends, stays late, comes in early, and generally works harder than they agreed or need or to. Such noble efforts are doomed to fail because they implicitly reset the SLA. Now, when the normal course of events catch up to these overachievers, and they have to fall back to a sustainable workload – when they simply meet but do not exceed the SLA – Users revolt. You see, by exceeding agreed service levels, they have raised the bar unnecessarily, and often unsustainably. The best of intentions have resulted in unsatisfied Users, who complain to their Customers, who then berate our erstwhile staff. Talk about “no good deed goes unpunished” – there’s a reason IT is the most stressful occupation on earth.

This problem arises because Customers don’t take responsibility for their Users or even try to really understand what their Users actually need. They compound the issue because they don’t interact with IT – many IT managers have never even met or spoken with their “Customers”, except when things go wrong. This problem isn't unique to IT either. By way of example that we all can understand, consider medical service providers. The problem in healthcare insurance (as in IT) is that the Patient (role which is recipient of and interacts with the service provider) is not the Customer (role that pays for and defines the service.) This creates a mismatch in managing the delivery of service. In healthcare insurance, the Customer (who pays for it) is the insurance company, but the patient gets the service. So, whose opinion matters most to the healthcare provider? The payer or the patient? Our hearts say it must be the patient because we all intrinsically understand the provider - consumer relationship. But in which reality does whomever pays the bill not direct the actions? When you buy a pizza, do you not expect what you ordered and paid for? Image a world where you ordered a pizza, someone else paid for it, and you got whatever the delivery man brought you (not what was paid for and not what you ordered.) How often would get what you wanted? Breaking the consumer-provider service relationship by confusing, abdicating or assuming roles and responsibilities rarely results in satisfaction among or between Users or Customers or Providers.

The same disconnect arises in corporate IT. The Customer (e.g., the business) pays for and defines services, but it’s the Users that consume them. Whose opinion matters most to IT – Customer or User? From a provider point of view, the Customer is paying so they matter most; but from a service delivery perspective it’s the User, or at least we think it ought to be, so they matter most. It obviously can’t be both however. What is the role of IT in this situation? Users don’t work for IT, they work for a Customer. It's usually outside of our corporate jurisdiction for IT to mandate service levels based on User opinions. Imagine IT dictating to the VP of Sales what services, applications and features they need and can have to make the numbers. Picture how broken such a sales application – designed by non-sales people who don’t know how to sell – would be. (Well, some of us don’t have to imagine, unfortunately this is exactly how it works in lots of organizations...)

No VP of Sales worth his or her salt should ever accept such an arrangement, yet it is the default position of many. Customers should listen to Users and make sure they properly equip them with services from IT. Customers should interact directly with IT as they do with every other branch of the organization. But many Customers will not or cannot take responsibility for properly defining requirements. Most Customers have never even met or talked with IT staff and management. The CEO often goes to ribbon cuttings, and drops by the Sales Department to checkup, or visits Marketing to provide input for advertising. When was the last time a CEO “dropped by” the Data Center, or the Service Desk?

I know what some of you are thinking right now: "that's exactly why we ask Customers and Users what they want, we collect requirements and build or customize to suite." And I say that's why you constantly hear Customers complaining about the very IT systems that they (the Customers) have approved! Abdication of responsibility by Customers and assumption of that responsibility by IT does not and cannot solve the problem. In fact, it is precisely the cause of the “IT problem” so many have right now.

We in IT can't mandate the relationship between Customer and User, nor can we direct Customers to do the job they ought to do. However, we might be able to facilitate it through measuring service quality requirements from a human (e.g., User) point of view. We could then provide this information to the Customer to help with their decision-making regarding IT funding.

Yet, even this is fraught with issues. What if the Customer decides they don’t care if Users like the systems they define? Most Users hate the IT systems they have, and not for any reason IT can control. Consider sales people – the backbone of many corporations – for without sales, nothing else matters as the saying goes. Any good sales person has a network of buyers they have assembled over time, often this network is why they are hired in the first place. That last thing a good sales person wants to do is input that information into a company database – it’s their livelihood after all – and if they leave the company why should the contacts he or she fought so hard to gain and brought with them remain with the company after they leave? For this reason many sales people hate sales systems, all sales systems. Many sales people actively circumvent them. Now, when they complain about the sales system IT provides (at the behest of the VP of Sales) does it mean the service is of low quality? Does it mean IT is not doing its job? And if the Customer doesn't care if his or her Users like it or not, should IT care about User opinion? Or is Customer opinion more important?  What is the role of IT in this scenario?

Of course we all "care", but we shouldn't exceed our authority and try to take action on our own. Think about an enterprise where Customers interact with IT, instead of abdicating to IT, or worse, undermining IT operations with studied disinterest except when things go wrong. What would happen if IT measured User satisfaction in human, job-based terms and had rational conversations with Customers about the findings? How different would things be if Customers were accountable to their Users?

My advice to these Customers? “I can help you, but User opinion isn’t my problem and can’t be solved here in IT. It’s your problem Sir or Madam Customer. Take responsibility for your consumption of IT, work with us to define your needs and manage your people accordingly. Your very future depends upon it.”