When the web first appeared on the IT scene, it seemed like a wonderful solution to the main problem facing IT at the time – how to push software upgrades onto hundreds (or thousands) of desktops.  It reduced the supported infrastructure down to a single set of web servers, etc.  Unfortunately, as applications were migrated to the web, IT departments lost their relationship with the users and help desks were put in place to take over that role.  Some IT departments may even have considered this to be a benefit.  At first.  They completely failed to see the down side before the storm hit.

Who are you and what are you doing to my web site?

It is important to note that up until this point, the IT department enjoyed an intimate relationship with their users.  They knew everyone that was using the application and could call them up directly, if necessary.  More importantly, the users knew the IT staff and could speak to them directly, if they wished.  The web took away that vital relationship.

Web users are a faceless mob – completely anonymous whenever they choose to be.  Even if they are registered users, you may be forced to consider them as “anonymous” due to privacy laws (even if they work for your own company).  Even worse, you can’t speak to them directly.  Gone are the days when the IT technician could call up a user and say, “I’m having trouble reproducing your problem.  Can you give me some more details?”  Moreover, web users do not have your phone number either.  They do not even know that you exist.  You might never be able to answer the most important IT questions:

- Who are you?
- What is your environment and how is it different?
- What were you doing when this problem occurred?

If you can’t get the answers to those questions, you have severely limited your ability to solve problems when they arise.  Your job has just moved several notches up the “difficulty” meter.

The only people that web users might interact with are Customer Support agents.  Help desks have taken over the IT department’s traditional relationship with the end user.  That means that all of the details that the IT department needs in order to do their job must be gathered by the help desk.  In fact, all communication with the end user is filtered through them.  A survey done by HDI in 2007 indicated that 70% of all known issues are reported via the help desk.  In other words, of the known issues, a small minority – less than one third – is being found by the IT staff and the majority is being reported by users after they’ve had a chance to get upset.  Moreover, since many CS departments are staffed by non-technical people in a high-turnover environment, the likelihood of your vital debugging information being the victim of a broken telephone effect is very high.  And don’t forget to factor in the impact of having an out-sourced help desk that might not even be clear on what your application is all about.

The loss of the relationship with the user is one whose negative impact cannot be adequately measured.

If you only knew what you don’t know …

And it gets worse.  A report released by Transversal last December indicates that the average corporate web site in the UK can take anywhere from 30 hours to 116 hours to respond to support requests via email.  This is driving customers to switch to phone support.  This, in turn, discourages users from reporting problems, since the phone is a more time-intensive method.  Since most IT departments – whether they realize it or not – are largely relying on users to find the problems, this is a serious issue.  How many problems are going unreported?

Several years ago, I was working as a consultant for a large telecommunications company with a base of about 11 million users.  Needless to say, they were concerned with the welfare of such a large customer base.  They relied on an internally produced survey indicating that users only reported 10% of the problems they experienced.  Of the ones that reported problems, a minority consisted of extremely diligent users who felt it was their duty to report issues whereas the majority tended to be extremely disgruntled users who were so angry that they insisted on taking the time to be heard.  This implies that everyone else felt that it wasn’t worth the time or effort to report a web glitch and either tried their transaction later or gave up entirely.

If we take that survey seriously, then the real pool of issues is an order of magnitude larger than you believe it is – e.g., if you know of 100 issues, then there are another 900 that you might never find out about.  This also means that the IT department’s internal visibility into the health of their applications is an order of magnitude smaller than they believe – i.e., only 3% of actual issues are being found by the IT department, with another 7% being reported by the help desk.  This gigantic blind spot should be an unacceptable liability to any IT department.

If, in the absence of real contact with your users, you are relying on your QA lab and your help desk to find and address your web problems, I wish you much luck.  Your work is cut out for you.  Instead, you need to start looking at ways of monitoring what is happening to your users in real time.  I would strongly recommend that you start thinking about adding Real User Performance Monitoring to your tool box.  Don’t wait for them to tell you that something’s wrong.  Get ahead of that tsunami.  There are excellent tools out there to help you with this problem.