ITIL burger anyone?

Currently my girlfriend and I are lying on the sofa after we had an accidential meal: spaghetti with salmon, spinach and onions. It didn't turn out as expected but was delicious after all. Yeah, that actually happens if you really cook for yourself. That reminded me of Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef. No, I would not call me a chef but the self created food is by far better than from Mc Donald's. Any fast-food chain like Mc Donald's has a pedantic set of rules and methodologies that ensure the same customer experience in any branch at any place in the world. It does not matter if you order your Bic Mac in New York, Rio or Tokyo. It will taste exactly the same. They call this quality which is newspeak for average food made by morons.

Suddenly it struck me that the same goes for ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).

"The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), is a set of practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business.[...]ITIL describes procedures, tasks and checklists that are not organization-specific, used by an organization for establishing a minimum level of competency."

Have you ever called a service line to get support for your computer or any other technical device? Those call center agents use a flow chart to classify your problem and hopefully direct you to a competent person that can solve it for you. But there are these (not so rare) moments where your problem does not fit in. They have no flow chart, no rule to follow and you can feel the blue screen of death that paralyses the lubricated service machine (metaphorically spoken). Eventually they will keep you in the "keep the customer busy" routine hoping that the problem solves itself or that you give up.

And companies that implemented ITIL have brought the rules to perfection even more if they follow(ed) the ITIL rules by the letter not considering if those rules apply to their business or the culture of their product/customers. Here we go again: there is a set of rules that guarantee a "high" level of quality of service (vide supra) brought to you by a bunch of stupid morons. ITIL is not a bad thing at all, don't get me wrong but it is often implemented by people who are somehow fixated on the process of implementing itself that they loose sight for the big picture.

Now if you buy service from an ITIL compliant company ask yourself if you really want the average? Is that what you pay for?