Improving Internal IT Customer Service in a Healthcare Setting

Abstract

In a complex workplace environment such as a healthcare system, internal customer service directly impacts job satisfaction of the internal customer, the people providing patient care, and therefore indirectly impacts the external customer, the patient. An increased need for technical assistance, the lack of regular maintenance of technical equipment, and the sudden shift of many staff to remote work during the pandemic greatly increased the need for quick, efficient internal customer service of healthcare clinicians from an information technology service desk. The support internal customers such as clinicians in a healthcare setting receive from an internal, Information Technology (IT) service desk (SD) and its impact on organizational performance is not widely researched. This case study evaluates the process of internal, IT customer service through incident management performed by a SD at a medium-sized healthcare system. The qualitative methods led to results that uncovered inconsistencies in the process, tool, and the roles of the people in the organization providing and receiving internal, IT customer service.