Why the Improvement of ITSM in 2023 and Beyond Needs Experience Management  

ITSM trend #1: The increased business reliance on IT 

While this might not initially be seen as an ITSM industry trend and is perhaps considered more of an “external factor,” there’s no doubt that it is driving ITSM change. But what does it actually mean for IT?  

It’s easy to state that businesses rely more on technology than ever before (in both operational and product and service terms). However, understanding how this reliance manifests can be difficult. Especially because employees often view technology like they do air, in that end-users usually don’t pay too much attention to it until it’s not there (and the unwanted consequences materialize).

It’s really not too far of a stretch to say that there’s been a convergence of business and technology to the point that just about every business solution has a technical component, and every technology has a business impact – intended or not." — Doug Rabold, CX Strategist at HCLTech

This increased reliance on IT drives the higher employee expectations covered next. So, it’s essential to understand where the reliance is and what it “looks like.” Some of this insight will potentially come from traditional ITSM feedback mechanisms such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) questionnaires and periodic service-level reviews. 

These traditional feedback mechanisms are “hints and clues” about experience but are more transactional in nature and focused on service level metrics alone. Experience management is holistic and goes beyond transactions."  — Rae-Ann Bruno, President at Business Solutions Training

However, experience data provides both higher volumes and a continuous stream of employee feedback that “lifts the lid” on the end-to-end employee experience. It gives better insight into how well different aspects of IT service delivery and support are performing. Importantly, not in operational efficiency and effectiveness terms, but related to the outcomes experienced by end-users.

IT organizations need to understand that everybody at work has an experience every day. Everybody that IT interacts with has some form of experience (experience of IT as a whole, of the IT team, of the individuals performing a task, of the product or the service). The key question that IT teams need to ask themselves is, do they want to design that experience and give employees the best possible outcome (considering their constraints, resources, and budget), or do they want to let it happen by accident? Properly run, experience data will tell an organization where people are having productivity issues. Many organizations have been surprised when analyzing experience data as they realize they have been trying to fix the wrong things."  — Neil Keating, Chief Experience Office at Bright Horse

Without experience data, the IT service provider is potentially blind to many end-user issues and makes decisions based on misinformation and gut feelings. Perpetuating the issues experienced by end-users, despite their increased reliance on IT. 

Who is measuring the experience of the IT professional? In my experience, this is overlooked and is just as important as the end-user experience. My other concern is that many people designing and evaluating experience metrics have little to no education in the physiology of use. It’s akin to IT professionals designing surveys – where the notion of unconscious bias is prevalent."  — Katrina Macdermid, Founder at HIT Global

ITSM trend #2: Higher employee expectations of IT services and support 

When asked what end-users want, a sensible IT response might be, “They want us to meet the agreed service levels.” It’s a valid answer but not necessarily the best one. If employees answer that same question, they will provide answers such as, “I want to be able to work at any time from anywhere.” “I want it to be easier to do my job.” “I want to respond quickly to external customers and help them meet their goals.”

In my experience, many people designing experience are not suitably skilled – for example, a key premise in design thinking is not to ask what people want. It’s to immerse yourself in their environment, observe, and empathize with how they use tech. A saying attributed to Henry Ford commonly backs this, ‘If I had asked customers what they wanted – they would have said faster horses."  — Katrina Macdermid

This issue is because of what the IT industry has termed “watermelon service level agreements (SLAs)” or the “watermelon effect” – where IT performance dashboards and individual metrics look green on the outside but, once cut into, i.e. examined further, are red inside. 

While meeting the ‘agreed service levels’ is a plus, the sad truth is that very often ‘agreed’ is not an accurate statement. IT decides what levels it can (usually) meet and documents those without exploring the real needs of business lines in far too many cases. If a service provider is working with an organization to agree on its needs, why not take it a step further and ask questions about expectations and perceptions? That leads to experience management with all the benefits we see from that."  — Roy Atkinson, CEO at Clifton Butterfield LLC

This “watermelon effect” gives an IT service provider the false impression that “all is well” while end-users are unhappy with at least some aspect of the services they consume. This “performance gap” is caused by various factors, including that the service provider measures what it thinks is important, not what employees deem so, and that measurement is taken at the point of service creation, not service consumption. In both cases, there’s an operational focus at the expense of outcomes. Furthermore, IT measures individual interactions and not all transactions and touchpoints employees experience in their jobs. 

SLAs are helpful as they provide a quantitative measure of operational data. They are good at telling us what to do and how well to do it (for example, pick up the phone in under 30 seconds, respond to a P1 ticket in 15 minutes, or keep a server up for 99% of the time). The problem is they were never designed to measure experience, so it is no surprise that they don’t."  — Neil Keating

Experience management tackles both of these root causes, moving the focus from the “mechanics” of IT operations to the outcomes from the end-user perspective. This focus identifies the issues end-users face and “what matters most.” It might also help to identify the root causes of some issues too. Importantly, the experience data and insights remove a service provider’s blinkers and biases to show the outcome-based reality rather than allowing end-user issues to remain hidden behind the dashboard “sea of green” provided with traditional IT metrics.

There is an increased mismatch in the intentional time of service management and experience management. The half-life of an SLA is 11 years unchanged; the half-life of an experience level agreement (XLA) is nine months. So we are talking about a very different set of variables. Service management moves at a much slower pace of change."  — Alan Nance, Squad Leader NextGeneration Service and Experience Management at EY

Without experience data, the IT service provider is again blind to many end-user issues and still makes decisions based on misinformation and gut feelings. This situation could include the introduction of new technology-based capabilities designed to improve experiences that, in fact, do the opposite – with IT self-service portals a great example.

IT has traditionally overlooked employee sentiment. We hear it constantly: in meetings, during a support interaction, etc. But that information isn’t documented fully, nor is it reviewed. Instead, we have targets around interactions and don’t see the big picture of how that interaction affects employee sentiment. Their sentiment is impacted by ‘moments over time,’ which is EVERYTHING they experience, and IT doesn’t have insight into all of it. By adding experience level agreements, XLAs, and aligning service levels agreements with them, IT now has a more complete view. It can drive improvements not only to IT services but also to increase employee engagement and productivity, and help them to meet business goals."  — Rae-Ann Bruno

ITSM trend #3: Increased infrastructure complexity 

You might think, “What has experience data got to do with increased infrastructure complexity?” It’s a sensible thought. Well, at least initially. However, when one breaks down the reasons for the increased infrastructure complexity, the need for experience data becomes apparent.

The complexity of technology and change are permanent things in IT. They will always influence employee experience. The critical thing for IT is to continuously understand what are currently the most important areas that need improvement. Experience management changes how IT prioritizes its development actions."   — Sami Kallio

I can’t imagine a single IT service provider that increased infrastructure complexity simply to increase infrastructure complexity (bar early “We need to use the cloud” decisions). Instead, there are genuine reasons for it. Some might be considered negative, such as treating technical debt. But even this is likely driven by the positive need to cater for business change. So, ideally, the increased infrastructure complexity results from IT meeting business needs for technology enablement. But does it? 

Increased complexity and technical debt is a result of years of slapping together solutions in silos and then trying to connect the dots rather than creating a foundation for success that enables technical debt to be lowered while increasing the effectiveness of the operational environment."  —  Phyllis Drucker, Speaker and Writer at EZ2BGR8

How do you know whether the increased infrastructure complexity and the additional IT management burden it brings better meet business needs? There might be improvements related to scalability, availability, changeability, and cost, but is it making employee work lives easier, business operations better, and achieving superior outcomes? The problem is that IT doesn’t know. 

IT organizations need to invest more in mental health safe environments for their employees, including psychological safety in communication between customer and service provider’s teams."  — Antonina Douannes, Digital and Sustainability Leader at Independent

As with Trend #2, traditional IT metrics will report against the “mechanics” of IT operations and SLA targets. However, there’s minimal insight into where the increased infrastructure complexity is helping or hindering people in their work, and business operations as a consequence. This issue would become apparent when surveying sentiment and using XLAs.  

Employees expect technology to be available, intuitive, and to help them with their jobs. If it becomes too complex and slows them down, they are less productive and could choose to leave the company for another where it is easier to do their jobs."  —  Rae-Ann Bruno

A key point to takeaway here is that there’s a new version of the adage “more technology is not always the answer” – that “more technology doesn’t always make things better.” 

Increasingly, the complexity of service is beyond the infrastructure complexity. Experience is not delivered through infrastructure but through ecosystems of services and people. We need to evolve our service governance beyond closed-system thinking."  — Alan Nance

ITSM trend #4: The opportunities for AI-enabled capabilities 

Hopefully, you see a trend with these trends. They all have the potential to offer greater value to organizations, but it’s dependent on knowing where best to apply them and understanding whether the expected benefits are being realized during execution. The opportunities for AI-enabled capabilities are a great example of this.  

AI-enabled ITSM capabilities can help your organization improve across all three of “better, faster, cheaper.” However, the same was true with IT self-service, and that opportunity sadly didn’t turn out how most IT organizations expected.  

While organizational change management (OCM) tools and techniques are needed to ensure that the people-change elements of AI introduction are addressed, there are also key roles for experience data. 

First, in identifying the priorities for AI use, i.e. where is the greatest need and where will it deliver the most significant benefits? Second, in ensuring that the new AI-enabled capabilities deliver better operations and outcomes.

AI is a useful and growing IT area but needs to be applied carefully and with experience in mind. Making something cheaper or faster does not necessarily mean you are improving IT enablement. It often has the opposite effect – people just get to the wrong answer faster! Before commencing new AI projects, IT departments should ask themselves, ‘How will this new AI initiative improve the experience and outcomes of the users?’ If that question can be answered in full, with measures, then the initiative is probably a good one. If you cannot answer the question, question whether you should do it."  — Neil Keating

As with the adage shared in Trend #3, the addition of the technology might not provide the anticipated benefits and, in fact, might have diminished the existing experience and value levels.

The caveat here is the adage that a fool with a tool is still a fool. Don’t go into any experience management initiative thinking or believing that a new tooling or technology solution alone will solve the experience problem in your organization. You cannot build a positive experience on tooling and technology alone. Transitioning ITSM to experience management involves a culture shift, which demands an evolution in how people think, act, and behave to drive business value."  —  Doug Rabold

ITSM trend #5: The continued call for digital transformation (and enterprise service management) 

The global pandemic accelerated digital transformation strategies for 80% of organizations, and the new ways of working and the increased expectations of employees have remained for many organizations. This change has increased the uptake of enterprise service management strategies to deliver the required digital workflow enablement, capabilities such as self-service and knowledge management, and perhaps even a centralized approach to AI-enabled capability adoption.

The pandemic made experience management a boardroom issue. Advanced IT departments are keeping it on the table by looking at all digital transformation projects through the lens of experience data."  — Neil Keating

Enterprise service management is a significant business improvement opportunity. But how “ready” are the ITSM capabilities that will be shared? The traditional IT metrics might show them to be consistently meeting agreed-on SLA targets, but survey data such as the AXELOS 2022 ITSM Benchmarking Report highlighted self-assessed issues: 

There’s no insight into what “needs improving” means in the above data, but our customers’ experience data does offer it. The latest Global IT Experience Benchmark Report shares different aspects of this. 

To understand the impact of experience, you need context – a proper experience management framework identifies not only the experience issues but also their causes. If IT departments can understand what people feel and why they feel that way, they have a real chance of solving issues properly and making IT more successful."  — Neil Keating

Importantly, without experience data, are the “consistently green” ITSM capabilities being shared via enterprise service management strategies perpetuating the employee issues in other business functions? The use of experience data would have identified and addressed these at their source.

To drill down into what needs improving, IT needs to work directly with the business to find out what’s not working well for end-users and then look at some of the strategies included here. For example, if you asked users, ‘How could we improve incident management?’ would they answer ‘fewer incidents’ or ‘faster resolution’?" —  Phyllis Drucker

The value of experience data to the adoption of these and other ITSM trends 

The two common elements across the above ITSM trends are that experience data allows your IT organization to focus its changes and improvements on “what matters most” and ensure that its improvement initiatives deliver as expected.

Key to success with experience data is making experience the focus for all of IT. Although each IT group may have key efficiency metrics within their areas, they will also be able to see the impact of what they do to the overall experience (shown with XLAs, pulse surveys, and experience trends), which unites IT to work toward the same goals. Through improving the internal employee experience, companies will also see higher engagement and productivity, and improved customer (external) experience driving overall organizational success."  — Rae-Ann Bruno

Sadly, without access to experience data, your organization will likely forge on with the best intentions but without the insights needed to maximize the business value of its improvement investments.

Service management has tended to be either fit for use or fit for purpose, and the measurements tend to be discrete. Experience is essentially encapsulated in our memories of a service. How did the service make us feel? So we need to expand our measurements. Beyond discrete variables. This measurement needs to connect four aspects of experience:  

• Experience against the Brand promise,  
• Expectations of the service beforehand 
• The service/experience promise made (by the vendor or in the SLA) 
• The memories of former (similar) experiences.
  
  

For instance, a bad experience yesterday will influence our expectations as well as our valuation of the same experience today. Service tends to measure standalone interactions without connecting these dots.”  — Alan Nance

• Employees continue to lose time and productivity
• IT continues to spend money in areas that don’t create business value
• Your company loses good employees because of bad IT experiences.

The focus on experience management influences all the above trends and areas – in fact, it impacts all IT areas. The most significant and often forgotten outcome is that it changes how IT employees feel about their work. Experience management gives a purpose to what we do in IT. IT is part of the organization’s success, not a separate silo focusing on metrics that we in IT have defined on our own."  — Sami Kallio

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