BITS Pilani

Pilani|Dubai|Goa|Hyderabad

Lecture 3
Customer Service and ITIL
SS ZG538 Infrastructure Management BITS Pilani, Deemed to be University under Section 3 of UGC Act, 1956 1
 IT Systems Management
Recap
• IT infrastructure includes all of
 Physical devices and software required to operate enterprise
 Some of the commonly looked at resource components of the IT environment are Servers,
Disk Storage, DBs, Networks and Desktop environments
• IT Infrastructure Systems Management is about how an IT organization manages IT services (for
its customers) and provides a stable and responsive IT environment which supports or furthers
the Business of the organization. This would mean looking at a group of products and processes
which interact with each other to bring stability and responsiveness to an IT environment.
• The objectives of an IT infrastructure Systems Management would be to support Availability,
Responsiveness, Cost reduction, Scaling, Security etc.
• This will need support from executives in-terms of IT budget, resources, mindshare etc.
• A good Business case would help in getting this support and we discussed on the steps to build
a good business case and the context to present the same.
• Ongoing support for this IT Infrastructure Systems management can be achieved by structuring
the organization well, and positioning the processes in the organization for efficient and effective
execution
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 IT Systems Management
Recap
• One of the critical success factors in implementation and smooth running of the Systems
management processes is its process owner and the characteristics expected of this
process owner and other people who are party of the process.
• All of the process owners and the process teams will need to have diverse skills.
• Understanding the System Management functions and Quantifying the skills needed in
terms of Skill Set and the Skill level, is essential to build a balanced team for effective
and efficient functioning of the processes.
• Staffing teams with these different skills and skill levels needs Identification of Skills,
understanding the sources of staffing including outsourcing, following the recruitment
process and retention of the recruited.
• The human characters, who are the process owners and form the process teams, have
different personal and Business ethics which could breach the commonly accepted
values and behaviors leading to corporate frauds and abuse.
• We looked at a few case studies like the Enron, Tyco etc. and looked at the legislations
(like Sarbanes-Oxley Act) which have come into being to address some of these. We
also looked at how this has a relationship to IT executive behaviors
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Customer Service
How IT Evolved into a Service Organization
• IT organizations were initially (1970s) focused to provide infrastructure like machines and
systems that were bigger, faster and cheaper and keeping track of them. They were
typically looking at accounting, and evolving technologies with the focus of being IT
suppliers for different groups within the organization, and did not have specific focus on
Services within the organization.
• In 1980s industries like airlines, banking discovered how IT services affected revenue,
profits and public image. Demand for factors like high availability, responsiveness, simple
and clear answers etc. gave rise to user groups, help desks, Service Level Agreements
(SLAs) and eventually to customer service and Customer service representatives within the
corporate structure
• In 1990s demand and expectations for excellent customer
service grew to a level where lack of it could lead to demotions
terminations & outsourcing.
• Its now evolved to being service-oriented with end user
departments having SLAs with the IT team

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Customer Service
How IT Evolved into a Service Organization
• IT Services management, having IT process groups which are structured,
positioned and staffed with the requisite skills, will need to have the focus on
quality of Service it can provide, for meeting reasonable expectations of
customers
• Since IT Systems management involves people who provide services to customers
(employees within the organization), in todays session we will look at customer
service and some of the best practices followed around IT Services for IT systems
management
• We will discuss the Key Elements of good Customer focus from identifying a set of
key customers -> key services of these customers -> key processes which supports
these key services -> key suppliers to support the key processes and finally
Integrating these Four Key Elements of Good Customer Service

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Customer Service
How IT Evolved into a Service Organization

• We will also discuss on ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) which is a

framework or a set of IT service management (ITSM) best practices that focuses on
aligning IT services with the needs of business and helps increase efficiency while
reducing service management costs
• Origin
• Quality Approach and standards
• ITIL Service Lifecycle
• Infrastructure processes and their comparison
• Myths in terms of Implementation of ITIL

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Key Elements of good Customer Service

Good customer service would mean meeting and exceeding expectations of your customers.
There are four elements of good customer service:
A. Identifying key customers
B. Identifying key services of key customers
C. Identifying key processes that support key services
D. Identifying key suppliers that support key processes

E.Identifying key customers

Although all company employees are customers of IT, typically a small subset of the employee
customers can represent the rest of the company employees and can be used for evaluating
Customer service and working towards effective process improvements
The following could be used as a mechanisms/criteria for choosing the key customers for a typical
infrastructure
1. Someone whose success critically depends on the IT services provided
Identifying the groups who are most essential to the core business of the company and/or
applications which are considered mission critical for the company and the leaders in these
(heads or leads) are good candidates for key customers.
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Key Elements of good Customer Service

1. Identifying key customers (Contd.)

3. Someone who, when satisfied, assures your success as an organization some
positions in the organization have significant visibility and influence. If the individuals in
these positions are satisfied, then that’s a positive influence across the non-IT
organizations. These could be key customers.

4. Someone who fairly and thoroughly represents large customer organizations.

Identifying representatives/leads who are high users of the services (identified by the
volume of users) within the organization can be key customers to solicit feedback from.
4. Someone who frequently uses the services
5. Someone who constructively and objectively critiques the quality of your services
6. Someone who has significant business impact on your company as a corporation
7. Someone with whom you have mutually agreed‐upon reasonable expectations

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Key Elements of good Customer Service

B. Identifying Key services of key customers

Once the key customers are identified, the subsequent step from providing good customer service
would be to identify the key IT services of these key customers.

The approach towards identifying the key services (or revalidating the usage patterns of current IT
services) of these key customers would be

 To set up a face to face discussion/interview/meeting with the customer for understanding their IT
services needs
 Differentiate between the “Needs” and “Wants”
 Negotiating and managing a realistic expectation with them.
Steps which could be followed for this would be

1. Preparation for the face-to-face meeting by researching and understanding the Customer
environment, preparing an interview script, and preparing for potential asks. These asks could be
“needs” or “wants”.

2. Have the Interviewers trained to interact with the primary customers in terms of asking open-
ended questions, active listening and restatements/paraphrasing, effective ways to cut off
ramblers and negotiate compromise and non confrontationally agree to disagree
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Key Elements of good Customer Service

B. Identifying key services of key customers (Cont.)

Steps which could be followed for this would be (cont.)

3. In the interview consciously adhere to “Validate”, “Solicit” and

“Negotiate”. This would mean validating they were really the key
customers, get the requirements, negotiate the reasonable requirements to
frequency and type of measurements and eliminate unreasonable
requirements through explanations, getting around and compromises. In
case of non closure, agree to disagree and move to other matters
4. If negotiations fail, “Escalate” to the manager of the customer and attempt to
resolve it.
The result of this would be better understanding of the key services necessary for
the customers, more realistic expectations to support, more empathy towards the
challenges by the customers.

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Key Elements of good Customer Service

C. Identifying key Processes that Support Key Services

Once the key customers are identified along with their key IT services, the next
step would be to identifying the activities/processes that provide and support the
key services to the customers.
E.g. Legal department may need an IT service to retrieve records that have been
stored some months previously.

The activities involved with this would be

– Backing up the data

– Archiving and storing it offsite

– Retrieving it quickly for customer access.

E.g. HR department may need activity/processes for providing safeguards

towards the confidentiality and security of payroll and personnel data.

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Key Elements of good Customer Service

D. Identifying key Suppliers that Support Key Processes

Once the key customers are identified along with their key IT services, and the
activities that provide the support are identified, then key suppliers of these
activities would need to be identified.

Key suppliers provide direct input in terms of products or support to the key processes

E.g. In the earlier example of the Legal department needing the IT service to
retrieve records that have been archived some of the key suppliers would be

• Individuals responsible for storing the data offsite and for retrieving it back to
make it accessible for users.

E.g. In the earlier Human resources example to provide data- security process,

• Developers of the commercial software security products and the individuals

responsible for installing and administering the products would be key suppliers.

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Integrating the Four Key Elements of Good Customer Service

If the four Key Elements are represented into a workflow as below

Key Key Key

Key Services
Customers Processes Suppliers

Reasonable Critical to Adds Provides

Expectations Customers Value High-Quality
Success Input
Met
•Key suppliers provide high quality • Identifying a key customer and then interviewing and
input into a key process. negotiating reasonable expectations of key Services
critical to the customers success to be delivered
•Key process adds value to the
• Key processes which produce these services are next
process;
identified
•Results in delivering a key service
• Key suppliers that input to these processes are
to a key customer
identified

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Key things to not overlook

 Presuming customers are satisfied because they are not complaining

 Presuming there are not customers

 Measuring what you want to measure for determining customer satisfaction

 Presuming SLAs will solve all problems which prevent Customer satisfaction

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 BITS Pilani
Pilani|Dubai|Goa|Hyderabad

ITIL
(Information Technology Infrastructure Library)

SS ZG538 Infrastructure Management BITS Pilani, Deemed to be University under Section 3 of UGC Act, 1956 15
ITIL:

• ITIL is a framework is a set of IT service management (ITSM) best

practices that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business

• ITIL describes best practices which are not organization-specific or

technology-specific, but can be applied by an organization for establishing
integration with the organization's strategy, delivering value, and
maintaining a minimum level of competency.

• It allows the organization to establish a baseline from which it can plan,

implement, and measure. It is used to demonstrate compliance and to
measure improvement.

• It is a public domain framework for practitioners

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The Origins of ITIL

• ITIL started as a process-improvement initiative in mid 1980’s in Great Britain, to improve the quality of
products and services provided by IT infrastructure, which at that time was not providing reliable and
responsive services to the bureaucracy and various agencies which were dependent on these services.
• In 1986, the British government’s Centralized Telecommunications and Computing Agency (CTCA)
formally sponsored a program to promote improved management of IT services. As part of this around
40 IT experts from the public, private, and academic sectors to establish a framework of best practices
for managing the IT environment. In 1989 this team came out initially with a set of 42 books that
comprised first version of ITIL
• Subsequently a user forum for ITIL was formed in the Netherlands and called the Information
Technology Service Management Forum (itSMF) which acts as a clearinghouse and sounding board for
discussions and suggestions on how to implement and improve ITIL.

• 1995, the total number of ITIL books had grown to >60 volume and had become unwieldy.

• In 2000 a more condensed version ITIL Version 2 came in. This reduced the list of available books to ~7
in which Service Support and Service Delivery were the most prominent.

• In 2007 ITIL V3 consisting of 26 processes and functions were grouped into 5 volumes around the
concept of a Service Lifecycle.

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Quality Approach and Standards

• ITIL has experienced a number of refinements over the years but is a set of publications that
provides guidance for service management. It has emerged as the international de facto standard
framework of best practices for IT service management.
• ITIL focuses on providing high-quality services and supports
• Quality systems such as ISO20000 are based heavily on the ITIL processes
• Total quality frameworks such as the European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM),
• Quality recognition programs such as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA).
• A Code of Practice for IT Service Management (PD0005) and BS15000 Standard of British
Standards Institute supports ITIL
• ITIL constitutes codes of practice for quality management of IT services and infrastructure
processes in which the services are matched to business needs. Some of these are
 Best practice guidance: it is a methodology of what works in actual practice derived from what
practitioners around the world have indicated as it truly works
 Non-Proprietary: ITIL is not a single vendor view of IT processes and you don’t have to pay to
apply it in your organization
 Comprehensive: ITIL captures all of the essential service support and services delivery
processes, and integrates them to work together. E.g. Incident, Error, Issue, Problem, Fault

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ITIL Service Lifecycle

• Service life cycle management (SLM) refers to a strategy that supports service organizations
and helps them recognize their gross income potential. This is done by examining the service
opportunities proactively as a life cycle instead of a solitary event or set of discrete events.
• Then for each of the phases in the Lifecycle, provides best practice guidance as a set of
processes which can be followed for IT Service Management.

These sites have a lot of description of these concepts

https://www.greycampus.com/opencampus/itil-foundation/

https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/ITIL_Processes

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 ITIL Service LIFE CYCLE (Contd.)
 Service strategy (Aligns the IT department to the core Business):
• Provides guidance towards deciding on a strategy to serve customers.
• Starting from an assessment of customer needs and the market place, the Service
Strategy phase determines which services the IT organization is to offer and what
capabilities need to be developed.
• Its ultimate goal is to make the IT organization think and act in a strategic manner.
Processes Involved:
 Strategy Management for IT Services could be in-source, out-source, cloud
sourcing etc.
 Service Portfolio Management
 Financial Management for IT Services
 Demand Management
 Business Relationship Management

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 ITIL Service LIFE CYCLE (Contd.)
 Service design (Design of new services, as well as changes and improvements to
existing ones ): Turns the service strategy into a plan for delivering the business
objectives, technology service delivery.
Some of the management processes involved are
 Service Catalogue Management
 Service Level Management
 Availability Management
 Capacity Management
 IT Service Continuity Management
 Information Security Management
 Supplier Management

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 ITIL Service LIFE CYCLE (Contd.)
 Service transition (Moving from a development phase to a operation phase): Develops
and improves capabilities for introducing new services into supported environments.  It
relates to the delivery of services required by a business into live/operational use
encompasses the "project" side of IT. Service Transition also makes sure that changes to
services and Service Management processes are carried out in a coordinated way. The
management processes involved are
 Transition Planning & Support
 Service validation & Testing
 Change Evaluation
 Release & Deployment Management 
 Change Management
 Service Asset & Configuration Management
 Knowledge Management

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 ITIL Service LIFE CYCLE (Contd.)
 Service operation (Ensuring that the services are delivered at an agreed upon service level):
Manages services in supported environments. Aims to provide best practices for achieving the
delivery of agreed levels of services both to end-users and the customers using process for
fulfilling user requests, resolving service failures, fixing problems, as well as carrying out
routine operational tasks. This would include Ops management, Service management, Service
desks etc. The Service Operation
 Event Management
 Incident Management
 Problem management
 Request fulfillment
 Access management?
 Continual service improvement (Identifying and implementing improvements to provide
better services): Achieves incremental and large-scale improvements to services by using
methods from quality management in order to learn from past successes and failures
 Deming Cycle – The PDCA cycle, 
 Baseline – How to baseline and why?
 Measurements – Why do we measure?
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IT service management :
Comparison of Infrastructure Processes

No IT Systems Management Processes Corresponding ITIL Processes

1 Availability Management Availability Management
2 Performance and Tuning (Part of Capacity Management)
3 Production Acceptance (Part of Release Management)
4 Change Management Change Management
5 Problem Management Problem Management
6 Storage Management (Not specifically covered by ITIL)
7 Network Management (Not specifically covered by ITIL)
8 Configuration Management Configuration Management
9 Capacity Management Capacity Management
10 Strategic Security Security Management
11 Business Continuity IT Service Continuity
12 Facilities Management (Not specifically covered by ITIL)

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IT service management :
Comparison of Infrastructure Processes

No ITIL Processes IT Systems Management Processes

1 Service Desk Availability Management
2 Performance and tuning Covered under Performance and Tuning
Process
3 Incident Management Covered under Problem Management
4 Configuration Management Configuration Management
5 Change Management Change Management
6 Release Management (Covered under Production Acceptance)
7 Service Level Management (Not specifically covered here)
8 Financial Management of IT services (Not specifically covered here)
9 Capacity Management Capacity Planning
10 Availability Management Availability Management
11 IT Service Continuity Business Continuity
12 Security Management Strategic Security

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IT service management :
Common Myths concerning the
Implementation of ITIL
There are 10 Common Myths concerning ITIL implementation
1. You must implement all ITIL or no ITIL at all
2. ITIL is based on infrastructure management principles
3. ITIL applies mostly to data center operations
4. Everyone needs to be trained on ITIL fundamentals
5. Full understanding of ITIL requires purchase of library
6. ITIL processes should be implemented only one at a time
7. ITIL provides detailed templates for implementation
8. ITIL framework applies only to large shops
9. ITIL recommends tools to use for implementation
10. There is little need to understand ITIL origins
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IT service management :
Common Myths concerning the Implementation of ITIL

1. You must implement all ITIL or no ITIL at all

Its not necessary and not recommended. All the ITIL processes interact and
integrate well with each other, so while designing this need to be kept in context,
but most implement what they need at that instant

2. ITIL is based on infrastructure management principles

Although ITIL is a library of books describing best management practices for
infrastructure Processes, its based on IT Service management.

3. ITIL applies mostly to data center operations

ITIL is involved with infrastructure processes and management, but is not limited
to Data center operations, but all areas of IT which includes service desk,
database administration, applications deployment, hardware upgrades, and
network provisions. ITIL also goes far beyond the data center in terms of SLAs
and financial management.

27 July 2019 SS ZG538 Infrastructure Management 27

IT service management :
Common Myths concerning the Implementation of ITIL

4. Everyone needs to be trained on ITIL fundamentals

IT professionals occasionally feel that to take advantage of the benefits of ITIL, all personnel
must be trained on its fundamentals, but its sufficient to ensure that everyone involved with the
design, implementation, use, and maintenance of ITIL processes are familiar with the
fundamental concepts of the framework. What is needed is to be aware of the principles of IT
service management, the integration of processes, and the use of metrics and management
reporting.
5. Full understanding of ITIL requires purchase of library
Its not necessary to buy ITIL books for its full understanding. Deep understanding can be
acquired from the Internet, attending user forums, participating in seminars, having
discussions with other ITIL shops, signing up for training, and contracting with subject-matter
experts
6. ITIL processes should be implemented only one at a time
ITIL processes are all intertwined with each other and work best when implemented in an
integrated manner. This does not mean that all of the processes must be implemented at once
(as we saw with Myth #1), but it does mean that some groups of processes could and should
be implemented together. Some examples of optimal groupings are Incident and Problem
27 JulyManagement;
2019 Configuration, ChangeSSand Release
ZG538 Management;
Infrastructure Management 28
IT service management :
Common Myths concerning the Implementation of ITIL

7. ITIL provides detailed templates for implementation

ITIL is a process-oriented framework of best practices for managing IT infrastructures and by design
is generalized and non-specific and as such does not include detailed templates like checklists,
worksheets, and assessment documents for processes. E.g. In incident tracking, ITIL offers
suggestions on what fields to include but not forms to use
8. ITIL framework applies only to large shops
ITIL management guidelines are based on
– process rather than function
– service rather than size and scope
– being independent rather than dependent on specific platforms
and hence the structure and principles of ITIL applies to all environments regardless of size, scope,
complexity, or platforms
9. ITIL recommends tools to use for implementation
ITIL does not recommend specific tools to use when implementing its framework. Its just a library of
best practices. There are only forums where some guidance can come.
10. There is little need to understand ITIL origins
Integration and collaboration are two of the key cornerstones of ITIL from its start and is an
integrated work of very diverse group of people. Understanding the past could help in future
implementations
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