Delivering exceptional IT customer service has become as crucial for IT departments as it is for luxury hotels. A fascinating framework from Penn State’s School of Hospitality Management offers valuable insights that translate surprisingly well to our industry.
Hospitality Research with Major IT Implications
Researchers led by Professor Anna Mattila recently published findings in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management that explore how AI can be leveraged to meet or exceed customer expectations. While their research focused on hospitality businesses, the applications for IT service desks and support teams are striking.
Their work centers on the “gap model” of service quality, identifying critical disconnects between customer expectations and their actual service experience. As an IT professional, I immediately recognized how these gaps plague our help desks and customer support systems.
The Four Service Gaps in IT Customer Service
The Penn State researchers examined four specific aspects of the gap model that businesses can address using AI. Let me break down how each applies to IT:
1. The Listening Gap
In hospitality, this gap represents the difference between customer expectations and a company’s understanding of those expectations. In IT, we face this constantly—users expect immediate solutions while we struggle to interpret their often vague descriptions of technical problems.
Mattila says, “AI can help bridge the listening gap, as it can process large amounts of data to understand customer feedback.” AI can analyze support tickets, customer feedback, and user behavior patterns for IT departments to identify common issues and expectations that might otherwise go unrecognized.
However, Mattila cautions that AI must correctly interpret emotions to be effective: “If an AI agent does not understand the emotions of customers, that can hinder its effectiveness.” This is equally true when dealing with frustrated users facing system outages or data loss—AI needs to recognize urgency and anxiety to respond appropriately.
2. The Service Performance Gap
This gap emerges when there’s a difference between service standards and actual delivery. We often establish SLAs in IT but struggle to meet them consistently across all ticket types and users.
Mattila notes that while “AI could free employees from routine work,” it might also “decrease the human connection.” In our industry, this translates perfectly—AI can handle password resets and basic troubleshooting, but complex infrastructure issues or sensitive security breaches still require the human touch.
Many IT departments are finding that AI chatbots can handle 40-60% of Level 1 support requests, freeing up specialists for more complex problems while improving response times for routine issues.
3. The Service Design and Standards Gap
This gap occurs when management fails to translate customer expectations into appropriate service environments. For IT teams, this might mean developing technically sound systems that don’t align with how users work.
“AI can boost efficiency for businesses while improving the service design and standards gap,” Mattila explains. In our world, AI can analyze usage patterns and identify where our service design falls short. For example, AI might reveal that users consistently struggle with a particular feature in your company’s proprietary software, suggesting a UX redesign is needed.
AI’s ability to forecast demand in real-time is equally valuable for IT resource allocation. Instead of being caught off guard by support ticket surges after software updates, AI can help predict demand spikes and staff accordingly.
4. The Communication Gap
This final gap represents inconsistencies between what’s promised to customers and what’s actually delivered. In IT, this often manifests as misleading timelines for issue resolution or unclear explanations of system limitations.
The research suggests that “AI-tailored communication to each customer” can help bridge this gap. For IT departments, this means personalized updates on ticket status, custom-tailored technical explanations based on a user’s expertise level, and proactive communication about system changes.
“With today’s capacities of machine learning, companies can leverage personalized AI in messaging for each customer,” Mattila said. Imagine automatically adjusting the technical depth of explanations based on whether you’re communicating with a developer or an executive.
Finding the Right Balance for Your IT Organization
The most valuable insight from this research is about balance. Mattila observes that companies are “struggling with finding the right balance between using AI while not losing the human touch.”
This resonates deeply in IT services. The appropriate AI-human balance depends on your service level and user expectations. Enterprise-level support for critical systems may require more human interaction, while general help desk functions benefit from greater automation.
Mattila suggests, “Companies should look at their plans and strategies to determine how AI can improve service delivery for each gap.” For IT leaders, this means thoughtfully analyzing where AI can enhance service versus where human expertise and empathy remain essential.
The Bottom Line for IT Leaders
The hospitality industry might seem worlds away from information technology, but this research demonstrates that service excellence faces similar challenges across sectors. By applying the gap model to our IT service delivery and strategically implementing AI to address specific gaps, we can dramatically improve user satisfaction while optimizing resource allocation.
As we integrate more AI into our support systems, the key takeaway from this research is clear: AI isn’t about replacing human support entirely—it’s about strategic implementation that addresses specific service gaps while enhancing the overall user experience.
What service gaps is your IT department struggling with? How might AI help bridge those gaps without losing the human connection your users value? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
This blog post was inspired by research conducted by Anna Mattila, Laurie Wu, and Peihao Wang. Their paper “Closing the Gap: Advancing service management in the hospitality and tourism industry amidst the AI revolution” was published in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
