Message from Daniel Lawrence, Deputy Director IT Services: As we start the new academic year, it is important to remember that we have a huge role to play in the success of staff and students across the University. We enable students to stay connected and staff to develop new ways of working, while powering research that enhances the University. The systems and services we provide are critical to teaching, research and to support the University as a business. More than ever, we need to understand, listen, connect and empathise with our customers. We need to deliver what they want – not just what we think they want. As a result, we are strengthening our focus and attention on Customer Experience.
First steps – IT Customer Experience (CX)
As part of our drive towards becoming more customer-focused, we have appointed an IT CX Manager, Kim Yeandle-Hignell, who will be responsible for defining and delivering the IT CX strategy. The goal of the CX Manager will be to build positive interactions with all our customers and help us to ensure the systems and services we provide are simplified, useful and usable. Additionally, there will also be a strong focus on improving IT communications and stakeholder engagement.
A key component of the IT CX strategy is the development of IT personas. Personas are hypothetical people created to represent different user types that might use a service, brand or product in a similar way. Our goal is to use personas to help us become far more customer-focused when developing/designing new systems and services going forward – in particular tuning our communications to take account of the distinctive differences between various user types. In order to ensure the personas are meaningful, we are pulling data from recent surveys and conducting interviews with students, PhD students, academics, managers, researchers, distance-learners, administrators, etc., across all Colleges and Corporate Services. Over the coming months, these will evolve and change until we have a set of key personas available for teams to use as reference and guidance across IT.
Change doesn’t happen over night! You may not see a noticeable difference immediately. However, a timeline and roadmap of CX activity will be included in the IT CX strategy.
Our customers are important, but so are you!
As we look outwards and focus on engaging more with our customers, we will also be looking internally. As part of CX, we will be working towards improving communications and engagement across IT, bridging gaps and moving away from silo working, with a goal of truly becoming one team.
We need your support
We all interact with students and staff on a daily basis. Their attitude and opinion of IT Services is a direct result of the experience they have with us at all levels. Let’s work together, to deliver a positive experience our customers will remember!
Questions?
If you have any questions regarding IT Customer Experience please contact Kim Yeandle-Hignell , IT Customer Experience Manager.