Elton John I’m Not, But I Still Love IT
Developing new products, improving existing ones, setting release dates, and increasing sales are usually top priorities for most tech companies. We often get so busy with implementing strategic goals, that it becomes easy to overlook one of the most important aspects of a successful company, solid customer service.
Listening to customers is crucial, because ultimately, the people who use your product often know best how to improve the customer experience. I am lucky enough to work for a company that places a huge emphasis on customer feedback, so much so that we recently conducted a 350-user survey to hear directly from IT professionals. We wanted to find out what bugs people in IT, the parts of the job that are difficult or frustrating, and of course, the elements of the job that are exciting, fun and enjoyable.
We gained enormous insight from the survey, hearing directly from IT professionals who work extremely hard behind the scenes.
In order to get the full picture, the questions and findings of the survey were divided into several categories with both negative and positive responses. Below are the most common issues (negative) voiced in the survey results:
- Misperception of IT – users misunderstand what IT professionals do and how long processes take
- Lack of technical knowledge – users often lack the necessary technical knowledge needed to address a problem which can lead to them thinking that IT is slow to fix their problems
- Overabundance of work – many IT admins feel unable to complete the volume of work they are tasked with
- Lack of financial support – many voiced their frustration over the lack of financial support from management, either to hire another team member or invest in new technology
- Underappreciated – probably the most common negative feedback received was that IT professionals feel a lack of appreciation for their work both from users and management
But, fear not. There were a lot of positives gleaned from the survey as well:
- Love the challenges – IT professionals enter their line of work because they actually enjoy facing technical challenges on a daily basis
- Creative thinking – many are creative problem solvers by nature and IT allows them to flourish in this regard
- Teamwork – contrary to popular belief, IT admins actually likes working WITH end users to find solutions and enjoy collaborating with their teams
- Innovation – IT professionals love the innovation and dynamic quality of the work they get to do every day and like learning about new technologies
So, here’s to all of the IT professionals out there who work so hard day in and day out!
To give you guys and gals a little recognition, I got together with my band (it’s what I do on weekends, don’t judge!) and came up with this song based on some of the feedback we received from the survey. Hope you enjoy!
To watch my music video on YouTube, click here.
