For most of my professional career, I have been the person responsible for fixing things when they break. This responsibility has been mostly in the realm of IT stuff. A warning before reading further. Language may be coarser than usual Recently, I had the opportunity to be on the receiving end of the IT support chain. What I experienced is consistent with what I have been thinking for quite awhile. In terms of customer service, IT has a reputation for sucking. Mostly, this reputation is deserved. Let me explain.
Two weeks ago, the "X" key on my MacBook Pro's keyboard broke. There are little clips that hold it in place. These keys easily press back in place when they come off from time to time, if the clips are intact. Basically, I needed a new key top replace the broken one. Having spent years dissecting computers and servers of various sizes and shapes, completing this repair would have taken approximately 3 minutes to complete with a suitable replacement part. (I estimate three minutes because it takes forever to open electronics packaging.) The worst part of sending my computer back was protecting proprietary designs and NDA information that is contained on the hard drive. Apple's warranty terms prohibit the removal of the hard drive, so to protect the data, I had to erase a perfectly working Mac OS X install. So after one day to erase and ship the computer, one day for the repair, and one more day to receive the computer and restore it. Three days! This is more difficult than it really needs to be.
Sometimes, I feel like we are doing the same thing here at Penn State. IT pursues a very DIY strategy for things. Is it always better to build than buy? I say, "No". Let me explain. How many times have you attended a meeting with IT where you were told no for any number of reasons? Allow me to list some that may feel familiar. Feel free to imagine your resident Alpha Geek's voice while reading this list. I have added my own translations in italics.
- That solution won't scale. Gosh, it sounds like a lot of work...
- Is it standards based? How much work will I have to do to integrate this?
- Security isn't tight enough. Gosh, it sounds like a lot of work...
- We don't have enough resources to do that. That sounds like a lot of work, and we are already busy.
- and so on...
I feel sometimes that we are defending ourselves from customers just because they are not us. One of the things that I am trying to encourage peers and superiors to do, is saying yes instead of no. Anecdotally, I feel like I spend too much time discussing why we can't or won't. Instead of spending our time and energy saying no, let's just say take that same amount of effort to make things happen. For those who get asked the questions, try not saying no immediately. Listen first, think about it. It's alright to say, "I don't know" for today. Do a little research and then maybe say yes. Maybe you can meet the customer halfway.
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