IT Customer Service Training: Logic to Empathy #CIO #ITIL
by Kate Nasser | 3 Comments »
IT Customer Service Training: Breakthrough to Collaboration
IT Customer Service Training: Breakthrough Collaboration Image by:kenfagerdotcom
What part of a business today doesn’t run on technology? Information technology (IT) has moved from the hidden back office, to the desktop, right into the employees and customers hands via mobile apps (forgive the moving pun).
Every aspect of business — large and small — depends on technology. Your developers, operations staff, and support analysts are impacting company success every single minute! Do yours work well with non-technical teams in other parts of the organization?
Are all your IT staff great at collaborating with non-technical teams like sales, marketing, finance, HR, distribution, and all the rest?
Many CIOs answer no and create new positions call business technology analysts to be the liaison between IT and the non-technical business departments. It is one solution.
Yet with more layers of communication come additional challenges of miscommunication and time delays. Moreover today’s medium-size hot tech companies, don’t have layers and layers of organizational structure. Everyone must interact for the business to be successful.
The good news is that technical professionals — from developers to technical support staff — are quite capable of learning how to engage in teamwork with the rest of the organization.
How do I know? After working as a programmer and systems analyst, I have had the privilege for 25 years, as The People-Skills Coach™, of delivering IT customer service training to IT staff. They can learn it! They do need training to step outside of their own perspective and see another view.
IT Customer Service Training: Focus on Collaboration
As CIOs continue to work on having IT seen as an integral part of the business, they reach out to me to deliver IT customer service training. This phrase brings to mind the front line technical support teams who do internal customer facing. That’s a big part of it.
Yet the CIOs want more than that. They want all technical teams (including the developers) to work well on project teams with other business departments. They want their organizations to deliver great customer service and be agile in cross teamwork.
Here’s what the IT customer service training must include …
- Focus on collaboration. Instead of starting with the standard “always smile” advice of standard customer service programs, start with the big picture of how the company succeeds. When I deliver IT customer service training, I help the technical teams see how they fit into the teamwork of the entire organization. We focus on contributing without thinking that IT staff are indispensable.
- Speaking in business terms not technical jargon. All professionals — technical and non-technical — have jargon that is specific to their profession. It is always a challenge to communicate clearly to others without jargon. IT customer service training gives technical professionals the chance to practice doing this well.
- Explore the logic to empathy. Technical professionals have the reputation of being un-empathetic. Yet they aren’t unfeeling. They simply don’t put primary importance on showing empathy. Training can help them see the logic to showing empathy and the value to teamwork and to the organization.
- Practice seeing non-technical views. Some technical professionals believe logic is logic. When they participate in projects with this belief, they often come across as dominating instead of collaborating. IT customer service training helps them to listen and see diverse approaches to the same challenge. Here are some tips to get you started: Teamwork People Skills – Initiating Without Dominating.
- Business culture before techie culture. Technical professionals often develop a culture based on their work style preference and comfort. It’s a normal human tendency. In times gone by when they worked in isolation from the business, it seemed like less of a problem. Now that technology is in the mainstream of business, technical professionals must live the business culture. IT customer service training helps these technical teams bridge the gap between the two cultures. It’s about two-way respect — giving and receiving. They are capable of that. Everyone is capable of that — if they have the desire to learn and do it.
There is one more critical element to making IT customer service training valuable — CIOs, directors, and managers who model customer service and teamwork behaviors, speak well of the business departments, and call all technical teams to the heights of service and collaboration. CIOs: Are your IT teams truly customer focused? I am here to help. Let’s talk soon!
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Grateful for image from KenFagerDotCom.
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©2013 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results. Kate invites you to also connect with her on Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter. She welcomes your interaction!
VERY INTERSTING TOPIC KATE!
I congratulate you on your choice. Yes it’s a pain for any technical person to talk and think in terms of business but that time is gone. Now with the introduction of the IT Cloud systems, IT professionals have to be equipped with linking their service to business in a pay as you need type of offers. IT is like a 6 star restaurant with their software catalogue (menu) is offered to customers with price tag on each. Customers, using the IT portal, can see which software they intend to use and read the SLA (service level agreement) in business terms of payment. Customers then are expected to pay for the service being used. IT is no longer an expense department as their business value is shown and measured using the software as a service charging module!
This is applicable to either using the public cloud (external to the company) or even the private cloud (within IT control). Payment in private cloud can easily be used for approving bugets for IT on the expense of other departments as they use IT software!
Regards,
Khalid
Khalid,
You always add such practical application to these posts!! You have captured the essence of customer service for business with your examples. I am grateful — as always — for your contributions.
Kate