Let's all hate IT

The IT department of BuCorps has a bad wrap. I am discovering this the hard way. This week I had the opportunity to travel and visit one of our off site locations. The point of the trip was to meet with some people who were having performance issues with their system. Management decided that it would be good for us to work with this customer even though we don't directly support their system. It was a day out of the office so, whatever, I was happy to along.
When I got involved with the meeting I was pretty amazed at how quickly things turned into "It's the IT department, screwing us again." It was only the second time I'd interacted with a customer not from within IT and this idea was a shock. I never really considered that people didn't like the IT department. I know the stigma associated with them, I just thought that BuCorps was different.
Once I got back in the office I talked to my boss about the perception of the department from the outside and why people don't like us. He said that most peoples' perceptions of the department are from the help desk. This is an interesting problem for BuCorps especially. Most people that work in the Help Desk aren't employees coming in for life. They use the job to get their foot in the door then move on. Turn over at the help desk is high which means that it's difficult to get people with real knowledge in there. Since they are the face of IT to the field, having less than knowledgeable people answering the phones isn't helpful. It's also not good if they answer the phone and you can just hear that they hate their jobs. But, this is the case a BuCorps.
I don't know how to rectify this except through a vigorous marketing campaign. The IT department should focus more on interacting with the customers we serve and ensuring that we are meeting their needs. That involves a huge change from the past methods of doing things. The separation of the IT department from the field has been crippling. It results in inefficiency through usage of manpower and wasted money by purchasing equipment and software that isn't fully utilized. Making the changes will be an incredibly hard process. It needs to start with communication and end with creating tools which meet the needs of the people who use them.