Customer Outreach Helps You Justify IT

If you still aren't convinced that you need to make time to rub elbows with customers, consider this: Knowing firsthand what will make customers happier can provide powerful justification for IT investments. For four years, Bud Mathaisel, senior vice president of information services for Solectron, an electronics manufacturer and integrated supply chain service provider, served as the global account executive for a major customer on top of his regular IT job. As a result, he was able to bolster funding requests for IT projects by citing conversations he'd had with customers in the course of managing that account. "It helped when justifying investments in such things as B2B to cite specific examples from my own account," he says. "It gave me personal credibility." And when he needed approval for enterprise application integration technology, he was able to relay that his customer had told him how useful it was that Solectron could provide that company with a single view of its supply chain - and that none of Solectron's competitors had that capability. Wet Seal's Relich won support to install DSL in stores because he could stand up and say that he had seen with his own eyes credit card authorizations taking an agonizing six to seven seconds to process via existing dial-up connections. Now that stores have DSL, authorizations whiz through in less than two seconds.

At the Tussauds Group, regular customer surveys ask visitors to rank on a scale of one to 10 how much "queues spoilt my day". But Dare can vouch that scanning survey results is far less compelling than talking directly with frazzled parents at the end of a day spent in lines with antsy tots. Armed with such direct customer feedback, he became the driving force behind a decision to invest more than a million pounds to roll out Fastrack technology in three of the company's four theme parks. By purchasing a Fastrack ticket either online or at the gate, customers can now scan their ticket at a ride's turnstile and get a slip guaranteeing a wait of less than 20 minutes if they return during a specified time window. A month into the season, Dare says that the ranking for the category of "queues spoilt my day" had already dropped one point.

As he prepares to spend a day mingling with tourists at Warwick Castle, Dare remains convinced that his monthly stint at the front lines is a good investment. "Everyone is short on time, but what you get out of it is well worth it," he says. And after all, he adds, "it is a day out of the office".

SIDEBAR: Your Staff Should Press the Flesh Too

IT employees at all levels can benefit from reaching out to customers.

CIOs shouldn't be the only ones who venture out on the front lines. Indeed, at many companies, all IT employees are encouraged to get out and talk to customers.

At Sutter Health, CIO and senior vice president of IS John Hummel tells his direct reports to leave the office at least three days a week and spend at least two days a year inside a hospital or clinic. "I expect them to be in the field working directly with one of our affiliates or in off-site meetings with one of our customer groups," he explains. "With all the competing needs for capital and resources, we have to be visible and be good salesmen for our product."

Hummel also encourages IT employees at all levels to take part once a year in the "Nurse for a Day" program, spending a day following a nurse around or working alongside their IT counterparts in the field. He believes that if a network engineer witnesses the impact when a paperless hospital loses access to electronic patient records, he'll think twice about just rebooting the system without warning.

"You could easily ensconce yourself in the data centre and never come out," says Hummel. "It's important to remember that the person on the other end of the computer is a patient, and someone's life hangs in the balance. If you forget that, you can cause someone harm."

At Wal-Mart, it's part of the company's culture to obtain firsthand customer feedback. Indeed, many corporate employees - including those in IT - help out in stores at peak holiday times, in part to witness the customer experience. IT employees are encouraged to document their observations by e-mailing a trip report to the appropriate IT teams. Carol Mosely, a vice president of IS, says that IT developers have always been required to talk to customers both before they start designing or modifying a system (to find out what customers really want) and after they roll it out (to find out how customers like the end result so that they can tweak it further if needed).

At Tussauds Group, group head of IT Chris Dare feels so strongly about the importance of acquiring a firsthand glimpse of the end customer experience that he's made it a key performance indicator for all IT employees to spend at least two days a year in a front-line role.

SIDEBAR: Five Easy Steps for Making the Most out of Customer Contact

• Build customer outreach into your schedule on a regular basis. If you don't schedule it, it's too easy to let it slide.
• Tell your staff why you're venturing out to the front lines and encourage them to do the same at least twice a year.
• Create mechanisms to apply what you learn from customers. Field reports with action steps, for example, can help you get the ball rolling.
• Take your PDA or a notebook to record your observations or capture quotes from customers to help bolster your case for future IT investments. That way, you can routinely build feedback into business cases for major investments.
• Share your findings with the CEO. The fact that you're doing original research boosts your credibility.