markbyantaylor's picture Submitted by markbyantaylor on
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Management and Leadership

I'd like to improve the PR for my IT team within the company.

We have a great process for the work we do, and churn through the business requests very well.  Unfortunately it is the odd hickup which everyone focuses on.

As with most things in life; everyone will focus on the 1 negative and ignore the 9 positive.

This has led to a negative perception from the wider business AND a feeling of being undervalued by the IT team.

Does anyone have ideas for improving our own PR?

One suggest that has come from the team is an email update to the business (monthy?).  Has anyone else used this approach?

tlhausmann's picture
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Submitted by tlhausmann on Thursday February 21st, 2013 9:20 am

I encourage regular meetings with your boss' peers and executives--your internal customers!

There is a podcast for this:

http://www.manager-tools.com/2006/11/jump-starting-internal-customer-rel...

What I do is politely ask for no more than 30 minutes (say, every six months or so) and ask the *same* questions. Among the questions recommended in the podcast are:

  • What do you and your division expect from my group?
  • What metrics do you use to assess us?
  • <there are more in the cast>

Listen. Do not be defensive and ask clarifying questions as necessary.  Do this regularly through your organization even if you already have advisory committees within your organization. Meeting one on one like this means you are reaching out to align your organization with organizational needs.

Powerful.

 

GlennR's picture
Submitted by GlennR on Thursday February 21st, 2013 4:21 pm

 

How many emails have you received today? What's the likelihood that people from other departments will take the time to read an email talking about your accomplishments?

I faced the same dilemma and this is what my team came up with:

  1. Consider deploying an internal customer satisfaction online survey to identify your customers perceptions of your department. When we implemented a CRM strategy for my organization, the software was difficult to use, especially 10 years ago when many people were not as computer literate as they are now. We were able to identify several urban legends around the use of software and found that problems with connectivity were frequently blamed on the software when it was everything from inadequate memory on their machines to old cables and other non software causes. We moved fast, corrected the issues, and acquired a reputation of customer-centricity.
  2. Consider asking one person from each of the other departments to serve on an "IT Liaison Team."  I formed such a "CRM Team' composed of directors just below department heads. These were my "go-to" people. I kept them updated on the progress of our strategy, any upgrades or issues with software or business practices, and informed them of successes. Part of their description involved them taking the word back to their departments and contacting me when their department had concerns or ideas. Meetings were conference calls held only when needed. Most communication was done in one on one 30 minute or less phone conversations where I sought their feedback or in brief one topic emails with no vertical scroll bars (thank you very much, Mark).

This approach is more time consuming than a monthly email. But because we focused on relationships and results, we were able to make more of an impact.

Substance over style.

Glenn

 PS: We continue to deploy surveys about once a year and are just now revising training based upon a recent one.