I’ve recently been working with a couple of service providers that take a very different attitude to keeping customers informed. The first is embarrassed by problems and is very defensive when they are reported. It doesn’t update its own “service status” page on its website for anything other than the most major outages lasting several days. The second is very open about any issues that occur and updates its service status information as soon as possible, usually within an hour or so.
Superficially, if you look at these service status pages, it seems that the first organisation has a very reliable service and the second one experiences a lot of problems. Appearances can be deceptive. Anyone working in IT, or using IT services, knows that there are occasionally problems. Trying to cover them up always backfires. The mark of a professional organisation is one that acknowledges issues and keeps customers well informed while making every effort to rectify them.
Keeping customers informed
I’ve recently been working with a couple of service providers that take a very different attitude to keeping customers informed. The first is embarrassed by problems and is very defensive when they are reported. It doesn’t update its own “service status” page on its website for anything other than the most major outages lasting several days. The second is very open about any issues that occur and updates its service status information as soon as possible, usually within an hour or so.
Superficially, if you look at these service status pages, it seems that the first organisation has a very reliable service and the second one experiences a lot of problems. Appearances can be deceptive. Anyone working in IT, or using IT services, knows that there are occasionally problems. Trying to cover them up always backfires. The mark of a professional organisation is one that acknowledges issues and keeps customers well informed while making every effort to rectify them.