Frictionless ITBuilding a Best in Class Helpdesk

Mindy Lieberman

Sr Director, IT

Zendesk, Inc

Frictionless IT

Great IT is not about what you do. IT is about how people *feel* about what you do.

ZENDESK: A NEW-GENERATION BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE CUSTOMER SERVICE PLATFORM

Gartner Symposium Stressed the Need for CIO’s to Change

Themes:

IT needs to change

Become bi-modal

New era of customer service and expectations

Focus on influence not control

Customer experience is a key method for sustainable differentiation

Where Can Digital Services Have Tremendous Impact?

Source: Gartner Presentation, Implementing Bimodal IT-Delivering on the Promise, Simon Mingay, October 2015

FRICTIONLESS IT

Frictionless IT 1

2

Just Enough Process

3 Technology

Right People

PROCESS

What stuff are you doing?

● Tier 1 & 2: break-fix & general help● Projects● Operationalizing new capabilities from

Engineering● Compliance audits & fixes● Security

Think past, present, future

Agile is good for helpdesks, too

• Asset management• Vendor management• Incident management• Change management• Access management• Compliance

Light: Just Enough Structure (and ITIL)

● All Channels are good! ● First impressions matter● Configure where you can, code where you

must● Go higher touch when needed (VIP’s)● “If you see something, say something”● Communicate early when there is a problem

Your IT Brand

Metrics

• Only things you *can* measure

• Only things that will enable you to take action

• Be cautious of unintended consequences

• Make friends• Pilot• Don’t assume corporate

communication mechanisms will work -- DIY

• Show and tell

Device Management & Corporate Culture

PEOPLE

The Right StuffOr – What Are You Really Hiring for?

We hire Zendesk employees, not service desk specialists

Fun Fact: Zendesk IT is currently 26% female.

Set the Tone

• Start with “Yes”

• Talk to your customers like they are people

• You are an experience, not a transaction

• Humor is great

TECHNOLOGY

Apps• SaaS• PaaS / IaaS• On Prem

And...• UI matters

Architecture Approach - Wall to Wall Cloud

Architecture: Wall-to-Wall Cloud Business SystemsMarketing Sales Finance HR Support IT Collaboration

RevPro

• It’s call “IT” for a reason!

• Go for a single pane of glass

• Eliminate any google doc where you keep data

• Trigger human actions with workflows based on data changes

Automate for Scale

Enable Self-Service and Ticket Deflection

Set Smart Standards● PC’s are hard to kill● Control the SSO portal for app

discovery (SAML is your friend)● Be more cautious about Enterprise

Class for anything that touches the revenue chain

● Eventually: get legal, security and procurement involved

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Frictionless IT

1 Cloud First

2

3

Process - use a light hand

Mindset – Start with yes

4 People – if you have the wrong people, #1-3 don’t matter

Q&A