Sunday, August 16, 2009

Teamwork and Straight Paths Shorten "Extra Mile"

This post, I'll talk about an IT Customer Service story with a happy ending, and some of the reasons it turned out the way it did.

The short version: Annual meeting of the Board of Directors; video wall funded by board member goes down; video wall vendor can't be contacted; call comes to Service Desk from multimedia tech. Note: This video wall does not fall under IT support. Within two hours, the video wall was up and running.

Things that went right:
  • First of all, the multimedia tech had a single place to call - Service Desk
  • Next, Service Desk responded appropriately by giving the incident appropriate attention and getting desktop support in the loop right away—to assess what could be done and when, even though this incident was an exception
  • Desktop support tech responded quickly, and pulled the problem unit to diagnose and repair if possible - a blown power supply appeared to be the issue
  • Inventory manager (a Service Desk function) had stocked an extra oversized power supply "just in case"
  • Multimedia tech was in the communications loop throughout
  • The desktop support tech had appropriate skills
  • The stocked part was available for use without undue red tape or special procedures
The board got to see the video wall in operation, the multimedia tech's bacon was saved, and everyone involved came out a winner.

PS: Thanks were passed all around so that all the people involved were recognized.

How does your organization straighten Winding Paths to get things done?

Give it some thought.

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