Current is&t Issue

Volume 20

No. 6  July/August 2005

IS&T Customer Survey 2005: The Only Constant Is Change

Brian McDonald

As part of a continuing effort to provide the best possible information technology services to the MIT community, IS&T and other MIT IT providers conducted their latest customer satisfaction survey in April 2005. These surveys, run about every eighteen months since 2001, have proven to be important tools for documenting customer satisfaction and discontent, and for prioritizing initiatives to improve services. The results are taken seriously by IS&T leadership. For example, as a result of the survey in 2003 and other feedback from the community, IS&T

• Renewed emphasis on completing the expansion of wireless coverage.
• Added Microsoft Outlook to the list of supported email clients; the Oracle Connector for Outlook was also added to the suite of supported applications.
• Joined the Microsoft Select Licensing program, bringing Microsoft products to the MIT community at a fraction of already steeply discounted academic pricing.
• Deployed an additional WebMail server to increase performance.
• Sponsored an “Expectation Levels” project, in which IS&T revamped the “Supported/Unsupported” classification of software – opting for a freer and more complete representation of the level of knowledge IS&T can of- fer on various software products.
• Developed a more comprehensive automated application for Windows updates.

Areas Showing Improvement
Many of these efforts have paid off. Since the 2003 survey, ratings for wireless availability jumped from 3.99 to 4.50 (on a 6-point scale). This gain is especially laudable given that client expectations for this service have been rising. Gains were also made in clients’ satisfaction with their ability to access MIT services while traveling, rising from 4.26 to 4.54. Another area with a higher rating was network jack installations and activations. The timeliness rating of jack installations and activations moved from 4.20 to 4.78.

Areas in Need of Improvement
Many of the areas that people expressed the most dissatisfaction with were related to computing “on the run.” WebMail, for example, accounted for three of the ten highest levels of dissatisfaction. Shared calendaring also had high levels of dissatisfaction.

Spam screening continues to be marked by dissatisfaction, despite an improved version of this service that was released in November 2003. Once thought of as a mature product, telephone services saw ratings decline, possibly due to unfavorable comparisons with the range of newer products and services becoming common outside of MIT.

Rated as Most Important
This year’s survey included questions about the importance of certain services and possible service enhancements. Rising to the top were

1. Automated software security and virus patch upgrades
2. Better spam filtering
3. Better web-based self-help

Interestingly, the Windows Automated Update Service received one of the highest satisfaction ratings, but it appears that less than half of the community has taken advantage of it.

Moving Forward
IS&T has begun to address key concerns and to plan for services that are in high demand. Check the is&t newsletter and the IS&T web site for details on new and improved offerings.

To view the survey results, start at http://web.mit.edu/ist/survey/2005/.

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