Adobe Used Apple’s Model for Better Internal IT Support

As it support Toronto workers can explain, tech support has been a tough industry to be in during the last couple of decades due to conflicts existing between the need of companies to operate in an efficient manner, and the users’ needs to get genuine help from a human they trust.

Adobe’s IT technical support has had to deal with those negative perception like other types of service desks. The company attempted to boost efficiency by using the method of off-shoring. However, that resulted in part of the user population to cease calling up the service desk. That was particularly true for people who didn’t speak English as their native language, people who didn’t want to interact with a phone system, and people who said their problems took a very long time to get fixed.

Adobe responded to customers by launching chat. It received positive reviews, but the feedback from users showed that the company could further improve its services.

Adobe centers greatly on the experience of users. Thus, it was illogical for the company to operate a department that its users saw as either difficult to use or slow.

The question is whether the principles the company utilized to develop software that was user-centered could be used for the service desk. Adobe teamed up with different groups within the company in order to revisit its desktop support.

The company also reviewed retail companies that were famous for excellent customer service. The goals was to see if the company could use their practices in its own service desk.

Adobe chose the particular model that altered what people expected of support services 15 years ago. That’s Apple’s Genius Bar. It was effective for consumers, so Adobe wondered if the model would work for it. That’s because even if a company’s user base is captive it hopes to be entertained.

During past, people contacted a company’s desktop support then waited for a person to visit their desk in order to solve the particular problem they had. That resulted in particular departments to assume that a dedicated information technology worker was needed. That resulted in a bigger staff and a decrease in efficiency. Efficiency dropped more due to drop-in users that failed to go through the right channels. They had been discouraged due to their visiting causing the metrics of service performance being negatively affected. However, that resulted in negative effectives for the community/company. When a person’s productivity is reduced, the whole company is impacted. Thus, the problem is the metrics rather than the drop-ins.

To make the situation better, Adobe had to shift the company’s focus from selecting tickets to keeping customers happy. The company allowed users to approach them when they required help instead of just sending IT employees to a particular person’s desk.

Adobe set up different service counters at 18 of the company’s biggest offices and named them Tech Cafes. It also made a Traveling Tech Café to provide the remote offices with a corporate experience.

The company encourages people to visit the Tech Café in order to get quick help from a helpful expert, get some replacement hardware, or tinker with various devices that are kept there.