Silence from users about IT is a sign of trouble rather than success. In a sense, IT should be invisible, where it fades into the background. But is the system really running great or are people just making do? Here are some probing questions to determine whether your IT system really is computing nirvana or a sleeping dragon.
Is your team actually preventing IT problems, or just more efficient at solving a recurring problem? Kudos to the team for getting the firm back up and running quicker after that pesky outage that happens at least once a month, but what are you doing to prevent the outage from ever happening again? Sometimes in IT we get caught up in solving the problem, rather than preventing it in the first place.
What workarounds are users creating to deal with IT issues rather than complain? We had one client who was amazed at how fast their systems booted after an image refresh. Why had no users been complaining of a slow boot process? For one, they didn't have a standard to compare against, so they just assumed it was normal. Also, they adjusted their work schedule to accommodate the quirks and failings of the system. So before the image refresh, our client's employees started the login process and then went to the break room for 10 minutes for coffee and kibbutzing. When they returned, the computer would be booted up.
Are you asking them? Despite the many complaints that IT professionals hear, most people will silently bear minor inconveniences. They may not know how to explain the problem or think the time to solve it will be greater than the small dings on their productivity. They may not even see the cumulative costs of those productivity hits personally, but have tremendous effects when viewed from the firm's perspective.