The management team is comfortable that the service level agreements can be met with respect to things they can control, namely employee performance and knowledge base quality. They are, however, concerned that because the majority of the help desk support infrastructure is based on Web-based self-service, an outage on the Web site could lead to missed service levels.

Describe what can be done to ensure the security and availability of the Web-based infrastructure and what the company can do to keep the help desk running in the event of a Web site outage (business continuity). The discussion about security should focus on 2 levels:

• Network infrastructure/security
• Application infrastructure/security

Finally, discuss cultural implications for IT support to encourage effective interactions with those customers who differ in beliefs, behaviors, values, or views. Make sure to cover personal cultural rules/biases and their impact to societies.

Add the discussion about security and business continuity to the section titled Performance Management.