End-User Client Survey

[ckaram]

I am the director - Service Management at a major financial institution and I need to create a client survey whose purpose is to evaluate the performance of the Service Planning and Design team as a whole (which includes the performance of the service owners, service managers). The survey is not to evaluate the service help desk. Can someone direct me as to where I can get sample surveys of this kind? Or help of any kind would be great. The financial firm I work for has not implemented ITIL standards even though I am a big advocate.

[ckaram]

no one has an opinion on client surveys?

[Diarmid]

Patience!

3 hours and twenty-some minutes is not long. Everyone's gone home to tea ... or something.

Sounds like your question has to be "Do the services you receive meet your requirements and expectations and how well do they enable you to carry out your work?"

You ask about design and planning, but not about delivery?
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[Diarmid]

just as a follow up.

I don't see how sample surveys can be much use for any serious attempt at evaluation.

Firstly, only very specific questions will work, related to the nature of the services, the nature of the business that they support and the nature of the questionees (is that a word? - it is now!).

Secondly, the questions have to be crafted by someone who understands these things so that neither the questions nor the answers will be open to misinterpretation (I've seen some real howlers in my time).

So, if you use someone else's questionnaire (albeit modified a bit to suit yourself), you will probably not know any of the above background that led to its development; you will not know if it was well developed or just thrown together; you will not know if it was successful (in fact you may not even know what its objective was).

Wish I could be a director of service management for a major financial institution. Sigh.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[swansong]

As a Director of a major organisation, I imagine that you have a number of people reporting to you.

Can I ask, what advice have your direct reports given you?

[UKVIKING]

I would basically say.

Go to an outsource company who specializes in this.

Using someone else's survey is pointless

If it is a question of money, then dont do it
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[asrilrm]

Hi,

I'm with Diarmid.
Service planning and design result in service delivery.
It is the delivery that could be surveyed from clients.
Poor delivery could come from poor planning and design.

Asril

[FGD]

Wouldn't clients have something to say about how they were involved in the planning/ design phase, e.g. describing the requirements?

[asrilrm]

FGD,

Yes, they are involved in the requirements gathering stage.
But they cannot provide any useful feedback about planning and designing because they are not involved in those stages.
Planning and Designing are company's proprietary subject.

Asril

[UrgentJensen]

ckaram,

I also work for a very large financial entity and, although this was already here when I started, we used a tool/system called Vanguard Vista.

I have so far used this to create and run a web based questionnaire on customer requirements for intranet content. I was not the actual questionnaire 'builder' on the system, so I couldn't tell you how easy it is to use.

What was nice is that it compiled the results as you went along, with some general statistics on the side.

As for designing your questionnaire, well consider what the others have already said. It doesn't have to be an ITIL theme, there's an art to this:

What are the critical success factors of those you want feed back on? List them out and gear your questions around that.

On a practical tip, if you're going to use a 1 to 10 type scale for answers then make sure you avoid odd number scales like 1-5 because you don't want to give a middle answer if you can help it.

Hope that makes sense.

UJ
_________________
Did I just say that out loud?

(Beige badge)

[ckaram]

thanks all!. the thing i am struggling with is what questions to ask to determine the service delivery . i agree that the survey is not intended to evaluate planning and design but more on the delivery of the services. and not touching upon the help desk.
thinking out loud, shall i tackle every aspect of the offering?
anyway, thanks again for all your help.

[UrgentJensen]

Like I said, write down what you consider to be the critical indicators for success of your service offering and then design your questions around that.

E.g. (and completely off the top of my head):

Customer service (Incident & Problem Management):

Are you happy with the quality of communication with IT?
Are you happy with the speed with which your calls are resolved?
Are you happy with the level of information you receive during the life of your call?

Change Management:

What is your perception of IT's ability to upgrade, remove or introduce services?

Release management:

Do you think IT is in tune with critical business timings when it is undertaking important pieces of work (e.g. EOM)?

Service Availability:

Are you satisfied with the availability of you key services or are the too many disruptions?

Capacity Management:

Are you happy that the current IT services like storage and the network meet your current and near-future needs?

Continual Service Improvement:

Do you feel IT is improving services in a visible way?
What would you specifically like to see improved/introduce/removed?

Service Management:

Do you feel IT communicates how it is performing to you in a way you understand?

Do you feel confident about how to raise concerns about service delivery?

Project Management:

Do you feel IT has a uniform and effective project management process?



Um... there's more but stuff like that, written in straight forward, friendly English will make you a lot of friends.

Cheers,

UJ
_________________
Did I just say that out loud?

(Beige badge)

[asrilrm]

ckaram,

I think help desk could be included in the survey.
I haven't done any client survey but I guess I can give some examples
- How long did it take before your call got picked up?
(this question is for the help desk)
- How long did it take to replace a broken equipment?

Some sort of questions like that, sorry if I can't help any further

Cheers,
Asril

[swansong]

Ckaram,
My previous post on this subject asked what advice your direct reports gave you. The reason I ask this question is I am surprised that the director of a major financial organisation is responsible for creating the detail of a survey. Isn't this sort of thing (without being rude to non directors, myself included), a little beneath you?

Would it not be better for you to define the vision, set the strategy, tell your staff what information you need to run your organisation etc, and get your reports (who are will be better placed to do this sort of thing) to determine the best solution to deliver these requirements.

[asrilrm]

Hi,

Re-reading ckaram's original post, he mentioned that he is the director of Service Management in a major financial institution.
I have worked with a company that mapped positions different from what I used to know:
My normal understanding of the hierarchy is 1) President Director, 2) Director and 3) Vice President.
Respectively, in that company the hierarchy is 1) Executive Vice President, 2) Vice President, 3) Director.

Cheers,
Asril