Finding Freedom From: All Those Tickets

Written By Cassidy Stier

DattoCon is Coming! Are You Prepared?

Hello Autotask Neighbor. Welcome back to my Neighborhood for another week’s discussion of growing your MSP and developing a happy Zen-like environment with top-notch Service Delivery. And preferably, not going insane or working yourself to death while you do it.

I’ve been noodling with the AG Team lately on the revamp to my Small MSP Improvement Plan (SMIP) to make it more relevant, more effective, more affordable, and faster to implement so you get your ROI faster. This program is for MSPs with less than 5 Techs. As you can imagine we’ve gone a few rabbit holes in the discussion and I want to take a few weeks and cover some things that can help you control the Chaos. (Note: If you would like to tell me what you need/want in this program (or be part of the beta) drop me a line – info@agmspcoaching.com).

Over the past few months, many great organizations have had MSP events with lots of education, networking...and vendors. Many of those vendors were extolling the virtues of their products and how they can solve all the problems in the MSP universe. And many MSP execs came home with several of those products in their pockets. But one thing many MSP owners don’t often think about when buying new tools is the current state of their shop back home.

In a Chaos-filled MSP, new tools (even great ones) will rarely solve the problems and bring about the peace, happiness, and profitability that having a well-designed Service Delivery process can bring. A Service Delivery team built on the right foundation means having a Triage Mindset - AND a Service Coordinator (SC).

If you’re an Owner with a couple Techs, your 4th hire should be a Service Coordinator. Your Service Delivery Team needs Freedom from all those tickets and the SC is going to help you get there. We start with the Triage process. (Note: if you are a one-man band or just have a couple Techs, then someone still needs to Triage tickets and the below process will be very valuable for you.)

Often, we see MSPs without an SC with tickets everywhere. Techs don’t know what to work on next, information is scattered, and Clients are constantly asking the status of their requests. The incoming tickets are just thrown in a pile for Techs to cherry pick.

The #1 responsibility of a Service Coordinator is to take ownership of all open tickets and drive them from New to Complete.

A deeper perspective is needed regarding the Triage step in the intake process. While the #1 perspective is to drive all open tickets from new to complete, at the Triage step, the deeper perspective is “How to set the plate for the Techs, so they can efficiently engage and disengage on the engagement.”

This means making sure the ticket has all the facts - and nothing but the facts -pertaining to the engagement. It also means properly coding the ticket, especially in the areas of Workflow and Assignment. And last, but not least, ensuring all the information has been gathered and the Tech has everything they need to complete the engagement outside of a business context conversation with the Client.

We are very good at break/fix engagements. If all we did were break/fix, dumping the request (ticket) into a queue and asking the Techs to figure it out would work 90% of the time.

But there’s a problem: we don’t just do break/fix. That is why a high-quality intake process is needed - and having a Triage mindset is critical to driving Chaos out of the work environment.

Our experience shows that 80% of the Chaos can be driven out of the work environment with a good intake process. When Advanced Global started the Service Delivery Foundational Improvement program, it was logical to start with improving the intake process and then working our way through the Client Journey from New to Complete - guiding MSPs on how to improve one milestone at a time.

Much to our amazement, we found if we improved the intake process, the Tech Engagement and Resolve SLAs would improve organically. That is why many of our articles focus on the Service Coordinator role and tools.

The Service Coordinator is the key to a well-run Service Delivery Team and the Most Valuable Employee, bar none.

The Triage process starts with the description. A Tech’s tendency is to read the description, figure out what is needed, and move on. This does a major disservice to everyone on the Team that comes after the initial reviewer.

A smarter way would be to delete all the information out of the description that is not relevant to the request—things like everything that comes after the name in the signature.

Contact info is available in the right (Insight Panel) nav; no one reads the disclaimers, and who cares about mission statements and other marketing gibberish?

While it is nice to be friendly in emails, and I like to start with something personal, this type of conversation does not belong in the matter at hand and should be deleted.

The From:/To: information is unimportant. The From should be the contact in the ticket, the date stamp is when the ticket was created, and the CC are the Additional Contacts, and all of this is in the email thread attached to the ticket. So, none of this information is needed in the description.

What is needed in the description is the facts of the request - and nothing but the facts. The less information in the description, the faster the Techs can read it, grasp what needs to be done, engage and complete the request.

The ticket title should be a summary of the description. It should immediately tell the Tech what needs to be done, without any when (urgent, help, immediately, etc.) information. That will be in the SLA.

It is always good practice to verify that the ticket is for the right Client and not yourself and that the Contact and Additional Contacts information is there and correct.

With this, we now have the facts and nothing but the facts (ma’am).

Workflows, Assignment, etc.:

Now what? At the heart of a good intake process is knowing which of the 11 Service Delivery Workflows or several non-Service Delivery Workflows (Procurement, Post Sales, Billing, etc.) the request should be put in, so the request flows from New to Complete in the most efficient manner.

It is critical that a good Service Coordinator is fluent in all 11 Workflows and has internalized when to use which one. As their #1 responsibility is to drive all open tickets from new to complete, they need to fully understand each milestone in each workflow. This knowledge allows them to think deeper into what the best workflow is and not just take the Client’s description (Critical - PC Install – because the Employee is starting today) at face value and respond accordingly.

When it comes to assignments, nothing is more useful than a skill sheet. The technology stack of supported devices and applications is across the top, with each Tech listed down the side. Then in the cell where the row crosses the column, put:

1. Champion – the person responsible for following the vendor and bringing major release info back to the Team in the form of LunchNLearns. They are also the go-to person for any questions or engagement challenges with the device or application.

2. Advanced – capable of installing any version of the device or application

3. Intermediate - capable of installing any simple version of the device or application

4. Basic – capable of remediating and maintaining the device or application

5. {Blank} – do not assign them the ticket under any circumstances

6. Training – looking for shadowing opportunities to grow their career to the next level

There are a whole host of other fields…

…most of which can be automated. Issue and Sub-Issue are fields that merit further discussion (a 4 Tech MSP Client spent 2 full days revamping these lately – I may post about this next week) The default (Triage Automated) Issue and Sub-Issue are TBD.

Require the Techs to change the Issue and Sub-Issue from TBD to something else when they complete the ticket. They can be held accountable via WFR. The reasoning behind having a Triage TBD Issue and Sub-Issue is that a significant number of times, the Service Coordinator is guessing, along with every Tech that touches the ticket (of course, this assumes the SC is non-technical – whether to hire a technical person or not for this role is a whole other article).

Only the Tech completing the engagement knows what the Issue and Sub-Issue were. Therefore, the best time to capture the Issue and Sub-Issue is at the time of completion. Please email me if you disagree – I would love to have that conversation.

Request for Information:

I am unsure what percentage of times a Client sends in a request like, “Help, I need someone,” or one with even less information. I do know that this happens way too much and wastes too much time.

A speed code sending the Client a note asking for more information is the most efficient way to communicate. The speed code can be pre-populated with the most common questions, and then the notification can be edited before sending. The notification is fully branded and calls out why the Client is receiving the email.

The status is Request for Information until the Client Responds, and then the status is changed to Return to Triage so the Service Coordinator can pick up the ticket and complete the Triage process.

It is a good idea to have a feedback loop from the Techs back to the Service Coordinator whenever information is missing from the post-Triage ticket. This way, the speed code, and the Service Coordinator can improve, and request the information the next time it is missing.

Daily QC reporting:

To aid in improving the intake process, a daily QC report of all the tickets created that day – especially the ones still open, should be created and reviewed. When reviewing the post-Triage tickets, look for a good clean description, concise title, right Resource, and any hiccups along the way (multiple Techs, multiple engagements, missed SLA, Waiting …, Etc.)

Summary:

Despite all the efforts to automate the intake process, this is not possible for MSPs. It takes a good Service Coordinator and lots of gray matter to process the limited information available, fill in the missing information from experience and then navigate the complex MSP Service Delivery Environment landscape to complete the mission: Taking full ownership of all open tickets and driving them from new to complete.

It sounds simple: just Triage any new (or return to Triage) tickets. But the process, know-how and experience are anything but simple – it takes having a Triage mindset.

That is why the benefits of having a great Service Coordinator are huge. A good, well-trained Service Coordinator will allow the Techs to be 10% more efficient, which means growing the top line Managed Services or Project revenue by 10% without increasing the expenses to deliver the additional revenue.

DattoCon is coming soon, and that room full of vendors will have some great deals. Better hurry and develop a Triage Mindset before that next new tool shows up on the credit card. Not enough time? No worries - drop us a line, and we can help.

Talk to me: info@agmspcoaching.com

Stephen & Co

Resources:

Cassidy Stier
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Finding Freedom From: All Those Tickets - Part 2 
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Finding Freedom From: Going it Alone