Don't let end users take you for granted

One of the great dividing factors between smaller businesses and corporate firms is their approach to end user support.Anyone working for a big organisation can call an internal extension or log an issue on an intranet, whereupon an army of IT angels work their magic on your case. Sometimes, one of these angels will descend from their cloud on the fourth floor and alight at your desk to deal with your problem personally, armed with a biro, sticky notes and deadpan expression.

Angels don’t come to your desk when you work in a small or medium-sized company. Instead, you have to go out hunting for scraps of left-over assistance from suppliers who appear to be too busy supplying to do much supporting. This at least is how it seems from the end user’s point of view.

Writing as someone who inhabits both worlds, I am intrigued by the impersonal culture that corporate IT support engenders. While the small business struggles to find anyone by name on a supplier’s customer support hotline, the corporate end user does not even bother to ask for an angel’s name in the first place. It’s just some bloke from upstairs, probably highly qualified and well-groomed but on a social par with a street cleaner as far as they are concerned.

This is never more acutely realised than when making a follow-up call or logging a cross-departmental issue. Invariably, the conversation goes thus:

“I need a login for my new PC.”
“OK. Who installed the PC?”
“A young bloke with spiky hair and smelling of Armani.”
[shouts across the office] “Hey guys, which of you installed a PC yesterday on the first floor?”

Whether or not this don’t-care-who-you-are-but-please-get-it-done culture begins with end users, IT support infrastructure does little to change it. Just recently, the workgroup printer broke down in the IT department where I was working. A bold message stuck to the device invited me to call a dedicated extension number in case of a fault. I dutifully did so, whereupon I found myself speaking over the phone to a man sitting two desks away.

I thought that was quite amusing, but as the angel stood up and strode three steps to the printer, he was as deadpan as ever.

Now flit back to the nightmarish world of the small business, where no-one you speak to seems capable of dealing with your query. Call up the IT vendor who supplied your kit, and you’ll be lucky to reach anyone who is even aware that they sell the product in the first place.

Even when a small firm calls upon specialist support for which they have paid contract premiums in advance, they often receive inadequate service. Replacing a DVD drive in an Apple iMac might take weeks rather than hours, emails are routinely ignored, and so it goes on. Basically, a company has two choices when it comes to IT support: do it yourself or risk going out of business.

So a final message to you angels out there: introduce yourself. It’s about time the end users appreciated who you are, and how lucky they are.