This week’s HDI Support World newsletter takes on some of the biggest operational and cultural challenges facing IT and support organizations today—Shadow AI, knowledge fatigue, and customer experience complexity—while also offering a last-minute reminder to celebrate your team’s excellence.
🤖 Shadow AI: The New Frontier
In the feature article, Rocky McGuire addresses the rapid rise of Shadow AI, where employees independently adopt generative AI tools without guidance or oversight. This new iteration of Shadow IT introduces serious security and governance risks—but also a major opportunity. McGuire outlines four essential steps to bring AI use under control: identify employee needs, provide secure alternatives, train on AI safety, and avoid over-restrictive policies. Governance isn’t about gatekeeping—it’s about enabling safe, smart adoption.
🧠 Knowledge Management: Why It’s So Hard
Susan Smith takes on a common but stubborn challenge: why do so many IT teams struggle with knowledge management content creation? Even with a Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) mindset, documentation often falls through the cracks. Smith highlights the root causes—time constraints, writing anxiety, and lack of recognition—and offers a refreshing mindset shift: treat documentation as part of solving the problem, not extra work. Normalize it, celebrate it, and build it into daily habits.
🏆 Last Day for Awards Entries
Procrastinators, rejoice (and act fast)—today is the last day to submit nominations for the HDI Global Service and Support Awards. This is your final chance to recognize your team’s hard work and share your success story with the industry. Don’t miss out!
🎧 Why CX Feels So Complicated
On the latest episode of the Bytes and Banter podcast, Luke Jamieson explores why customer experience (CX) has become so complex in today’s world of AI, cloud platforms, and hybrid support teams. His big idea? Develop a universal CX risk score to align IT and CX strategies. Even more importantly, he reminds us that great CX starts with great employee experience—because internal alignment drives external impact.
From smart AI governance to practical knowledge-sharing, and from CX clarity to celebrating your wins, this newsletter offers real-world strategies to stay ahead in a rapidly changing support environment.