IT: Serve the customer or lord over them? Dreamed 6149 days ago | | 427 words
“Do you see your role as serving the employees of your company, or ruling over them?”
The question was raised by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball.
Now with only 1 year and 4 months of “official” IT work under my belt, take everything I say with a grain of salt. As it is simply one man’s opinion.
I’ve seen my fair share of good and bad tech people. The good ones are easy to tell. They’re the ones who treats each person on their level. They do not talk down to the knowledgeable and they do not drown the new user in in jargon.
They go the extra mile to explain something in simple layman’s terms if requested. They make sure the solution they offer is not overly harsh (Reimage the PC!) without reason.
They good ones provide superior customer service since each and every person on their site they support is their customer. Customers with problems. Customers who will not call you until something has hone awry.
You are, after all, simply insurance. Paid to be there when something goes wrong, and unseen when all is well.
The bad ones lord their knowledge and power all in their domain. They do not return phone calls or emails. They are impossible to wrestly information out of, knowing it is only they who possess the knowledge. And without it, progress cannot be made.
It is these people who rule the IT departments of the world with iron fists. The person no one has pleasant words for behind closed doors and in hallways.
It is these people who feel their knowledge is a gift to all who receive it. They will not tell the customer what they’re doing or explain their actions.
They will merely flip through screens and menus so fast it’ll make their heads spin. They will fix problems with no explanation or advice.
It is they who work in cryptic, magical ways.
It is they who hamper the rest of us from doing our jobs trying to wait on them.
This is a close to my mind this night as I’ve spent the past few days being very irritated at some people who lord over their tech department.
I try my best to serve my customers. To keep them happy makes me happy. And if everyone’s happy, then all is well in the world.
All I want to do is to help people. I want to make technology not a scary and frightening wasteland of chips and bits. I want to make it familiar. I want to make it as commonplace and usable as the television or radio.
Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.
— mog · Jun 21, 08:36 AM · #
— peroty · Jun 21, 10:44 AM · #