It’s also where I coined a mantra: “No instructions!” as a means of truly embracing a frictionless experience for employees using IT services. Why should they need instructions for our services when billions of people buy smartphones, and they don’t come with instructions? Yes, if someone wants to do something beyond the basics, they may require help and documentation, but again, that’s no longer basic support — it’s a corner case.
The results that ultimately ruled out AI chatbots came from my time in a private equity-backed company that I joined in 2019, where I ultimately led IT Employee Productivity services, spanning a large portion of the IT infrastructure organization. Within weeks of joining, I discovered our L1, L2 and L3 teams were overwhelmed by support tickets. I remember asking my most senior O365 engineer/architect how he spent his time. His reply shocked me; 80% of his time was doing L1 and L2 tickets! This, coupled with multiple major in-flight initiatives, was a scenario that would not be tenable.
As a result, I realized this would require a two-part, simultaneous move—jumping from reactive firefighting to a strategic, product-aligned model in one coordinated move. One move involved aligning teams to product/service ownership, giving them A–Z ‘accountability’ as described by the RACI model. The second would be getting the right people doing the right work by optimizing the support of our services. For the sake of this article, I will focus on the latter, a shift-left initiative that, in essence, is the moving of tickets to the left from L3 to L2 and L2 to L1.
