By Hank Marquis

Maximizing IT Experience: Spotting Quality & Satisfaction Differences

When IT Folks Confuse IT Experience Satisfaction with IT Experience Quality, It Leads to Missed Improvement Opportunities and Business Dissatisfaction with IT. Here's How to Know Which and When to Use One vs. the Other.

We all make satisfaction vs. quality decisions every day. Here's a simple example. I can go to a restaurant and get a quick meal that won't be very tasty, but it's fast, cheap, and healthy enough. I will say yes if you catch me as I leave the restaurant and ask if I am satisfied with my encounter. If you ask me if this is a high-quality restaurant, I will say no.

Quality and satisfaction are different things altogether, aren't they?!

Yet, many IT folks confuse these basic concepts, contributing to the ever-widening "business-IT gap." You probably know how this gap feels if you work in IT.

For example, you might use customer satisfaction surveys to measure IT. You probably ask users to complete a survey after every call to the Service Desk and every quarter whether they called in or not. Some even pop up a satisfaction survey in the middle of user workstreams!

In general, I've seen that few users complete surveys, but those that do generally indicate satisfaction. And yet, they (users, customers, and businesses) constantly complain about IT.

The same holds for other services, too; what gives? The answer is that one may be satisfied and still feel that service quality is low. Vice versa, one may be dissatisfied and feel that the service is high quality.

Service quality is a complex judgment about the overall superiority of service. In contrast, satisfaction relates to contentment regarding a specific transaction.

Quality of experience includes judging quality over time, including multiple interactions with the provider. It measures five critical IT delivery areas.

Satisfaction is about one or more transactions. Today's most common IT satisfaction survey asks about a single delivery area.

So what are you measuring with your current approach? If you have trouble understanding why IT satisfaction is low, you're probably not measuring IT experience quality!

Please comment or reach out and let me know what you think, I'd love to talk with you!

Best,
Hank

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