For the next two weeks I will be traveling Europe hosting a series of executive round tables on Application Portfolio Management based on the Nordea case study where they saved 3.5 million Euro's. (Download the Nordea case study.)

Now, I love the interaction with senior business and IT representatives, but European travel in February can be challenging and with little margin for error. Based on a little research, I skipped making London my hub for the next 2 weeks and decided on Madrid, Spain - and based on my experience, I will never do anything differently.  From the moment I landed until 75 minutes later when I was in my hotel room the experience was brilliant - let me elaborate.

First we land exactly on time into the Terminal 4 and were directed with wonderful signage to the Immigration area where the whole process took no more than 10 minutes from gate to officer. My last visit to the UK saw gate to baggage claim at 90 minutes - thanks to long lines and only a few officers working the barriers.

After moving to the baggage claim, the belt advertised the time for baggage delivery to be 9:04 a.m. At 9:04 a.m., my expectations were met when the baggage arrived. Similarly, the hotel, which was aware of my flight arrival time, ensured they had a room available, well before the 3 p.m. check in time. I was in the gym before 10 a.m.  When I balance this against my usual experience in the UK, this is sensational and my future loyalty is assured.

As I was thinking about the positive customer experience and how it will impact my future travel plans, it led to my thoughts about how service managers could learn from this experience. In this trip, my expectations had been set throughout the whole experience:  

• At the plane, the time to immigration was documented
• The immigration area was appropriately staffed
• My expectations were set by baggage claim with a time for my baggage arrival
• The hotel emailed me the shuttle schedule so I would know precisely when a shuttle would be available.

In this new normal the traditional service management approach must transition from reactive incident resolution to incident deflection. In short, if you don't deflect incidents - the customers will defect. In fact I would argue that they are already defecting. Do you search the Internet or ask a friend for the answer or call the service desk? I know that I personally don't call a service desk unless I absolutely have to and then I do it begrudgingly! (note to American Airlines - why can't I request an international upgrade online?)

This is a cultural change for service management implementations everywhere. The need to focus on empowering the client forces a change to traditional service desk metrics. In the future, they should be relevant to a smaller number of calls as the value of the service management team moves to empowerment of the user. A little scary for traditionalists, but the world is changing as the IT millennials storm the workplace!

So from your virtual millennial, I continue my Europe adventure and will share more insights soon.