As I traveled to the Sultanate of Oman for the Asia-Pacific Computer Audit, Control and Security (CACS) Conference hosted by ISACA, an air travel incident presented a painful reminder of the importance of having a contingency plan.
The beautiful city of Oman has only a small number of incoming flights each day, so I allowed for a seemingly ample 36 hours to make sure I'd be on the podium giving my speech at the specified time. I even arrived at JFK Airport two hours before the already obscenely early suggested arrival time just in case I could catch an even earlier flight for the first leg of my journey.
During check-in I was told my flight was on time, but moments later, I received a message on my Blackberry that my flight had been cancelled. I knew I was in trouble when I saw that the line at the counter was already a mile long. While standing on it waiting for assistance, I hedged my bets and also called the airline service desk. Twenty minutes later, I was at the front of the line still listening to "your call is important to us" (when should you change from holiday hold music by the way?). The counter staff confirmed triumphantly that I had been automatically rebooked on the next flight to London. Got to love automated workflows. I only had to wait 20 hours for my connection. On the bright side, that did leave plenty of time for emailing and blogging.
Although my situation was dealt with expediently, I am sure that you can understand my disappointment and frustration when I discovered that my carrier could have swapped me to an alternate carrier and I would have made the original connection to Oman. While the airline may be under the impression that it dealt with my incident in an efficient manner, I can tell you the user satisfaction score on a survey of one (me) would be zero.
There is a lesson in all of this, and I had plenty of time to think about it during the delay. As we as IT professionals develop our ITIL® incident and problem management solutions and get closer to the consumer with our technology solutions, we need to incorporate processes that account for the human element. Humans are emotional. They are going to react to long wait times, disruptions and unwieldy processes-even if those inconveniences fall within what the organization has deemed acceptable procedures and service levels, and even if those inconveniences are not the fault of the organization.
Forget the human element and you're likely to be caught off guard presenting "everything is peachy" reports to executives who come back with scathing quotes from their griping employees or customers.
By the way, I did make it to Oman, not as rested as I would have liked, but thankfully just in time for my speech.
ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.