Sophie appears to be from a marketing background and is unlikely to understand the realities of a commercial IT department. This is evident from the "too much focus of tech from service desks" statement and "not focusing on the customer's 'feelings'", when in reality Services desks are the interface to the real technology people who own the systems and maintain uptime. Let's get this out of the way immediately, it is the marketing departments *JOB* to focus on the client, it is the IT department's *JOB* to focus on the technology.
Understand this Marketing people, Information Technology work is difficult, complex, intense, focused, time-sensitive, pressured work that *requires* a special kind of mind and skillset that few people can achieve. I've done your marketing job, it is not as hard as IT and no where near the pressure. Marketing people don't experience working back with the IT department to resolve an issue with the Accounts Department at 2am so that 30,000 people get paid on time. When they do that, then I will listen to their suggestions.
Generally the scenario from Marketing is; "continue to deliver on the expectations they set (updated for 2015) without consultation with IT department" and causing people to work back unnecessary so their boss doesn't get embarrassed about not delivering (the general state of affairs for IT) on the current fad. Whilst you see it as important, my actual customers - who generally answer directly to the board, see it as a distraction.
So let's address your, somewhat loaded, questions;
1) Where do you see the corporate IT department in five years’ time?
Exactly where they were 5 and 10 years ago with poorly defined OLA's. Marketing department that still don't meet with the IT department to get an understanding of the businesses core technology assets that drives the business whilst IT still puts out the fires they start. And with strongly defined SLA's and well understood penalty clauses from the people who actually maintain a professional and courteous relationship with the IT department because they have specific outcomes from their productions servers. Btw, what you call "the cloud" we call "a data center".
2) With the consumerization of IT continuing to drive employee expectations of corporate IT, how will this potentially disrupt the way companies deliver IT?
This is BAU. If you look to ITIL and get a better understanding of the transitional phases in the SLC you will realise that this kind of change is what IT departments deal with everyday. When you confuse the nomenclature as an objective it doesn't mean you understand IT, what it means is IT is still dong the thinking for you and anticipating the needs you aren't even aware you have yet. When there is a new business requirement IT professionals are involved first, not because it's sexy or a fad but because it's important. Technology professionals *create* cutting edge technology, we generally are prepared for your fad because we are already using it. Everyone else is a user.
3) What IT process or activity is the most important in creating superior user experiences to boost user/customer satisfaction?
The same as it always has been, availability first, response time second, optimisation third. Why, because we often service *thousands* of users. Users who cannot access their services generate a PIR. Individuals are not my concern because it interferes with my ability to do the really hard stuff that they need me to do.
Telling a techie to "have less focus on technology" demonstrates you have very little understanding of IT. Until you have experienced the pressure of IT work, say removing a core kernel module from a production system with unrelated failed hardware to maintain uptime until the end of the working day so that those 10,000 users can complete their work with reasonable response time before they go home replete with the knowledge that it can come down in a screaming heap at any time and cause even more work, you will *never* understand where actual user/customer satisfaction comes from.
And don't bug me about my EQ when I have to work back until 2am to make sure those production systems are *available* for those 10,000 users tomorrow, it's totally inappropriate - will you explain to my wife why I am going to miss dinner? Let's see you be so polite after an all-nighter. If you are wondering why I look disheveled and pissed off it's because I've done what every other IT professional has had to do while you look at the back of your eyelids, so start demonstrating the empathy you are asking me to show.
Many of us are tired with the ignorance that is laced in these questions. IT professionals do great work sometimes under impossible circumstances with very little thanks or acknowledgement. Y2K is a great example because the often lauded "nothing happened" complaint is the only thing people have to say of how well IT professionals did their jobs.
Sophie, if you really have a passion for ITSM then recognise that you are on the ancillary of IT. Until you pursue an understanding of the drivers of IT your surveys are poorly constructed and meaningless because they are trying to understand the symptoms of trends instead of the cause.
Understanding the cause is an IT professional's work and, with respect, you are simply not trained for that.
