Finding Freedom From: All Those Tickets, Part 4

Written By Cassidy Stier

DattoCon is Coming! Are You Prepared?

Hello Autotask Warriors. Welcome back to Mr. Buyze’s neighborhood, where my Advanced Global Team works hard to coach MSPs on having an amazing Service Delivery experience while growing, being profitable, and not going insane or working yourself to death to do it.

And yes, I am serious when I say that you can run or manage an MSP without needing daily therapy or working 100 hours a week. We’ve talked a few times about the mental health crisis going on in the MSP world, so if you’re feeling the stress, please read the linked article. Burnout is a real thing in the MSP world, so get help if you need it.

Meanwhile, I and my team will do everything we can to help you actually go on that 10 day cruise without Internet.

How? It starts with the Autotask Software. I assume we can put a big checkmark in that column. If not, that’s okay as the Advanced Global team speaks business process and much of what we talk about today should fit nicely in your Halo, Kaseya, or ConnectWise PSA.

The basis for this series comes from discussions we’ve been having lately about creating version 2.0 of our Small MSP Improvement plan (SMIP) to make it more relevant, more effective, more affordable, and faster to implement so you get your ROI faster.   I talked about this a couple weeks ago, so I won’t go into it again, other than to say that this has made us look all the way back to the core fundamentals of being an MSP.

We work with lots of MSPs. One constant is that most MSPs don’t have the fundamentals down and we have to spend a lot of time fixing and teaching the basics – time that could be better spent actually helping the MSP team grow the business, earn raving fan clients, and being able to take a vacation without a laptop.

So, we thought, “hey, let’s write a book in the spring for MSPs on how to build out the fundamentals so they can get instant value when we engage.”  And then we realized DattoCon is coming up quick, with all those vendors hawking their shiny new tools. Tools which MSP owners already buried in tickets and Service Delivery Chaos will buy, further distracting them from the fundamentals of MSP Service Delivery and profitability.

So, we decided spring was too late, in order to be positioned to have a great 2025, MSPs need to start those fundamentals now – so call this pre-season training camp.

By the way, we don’t care if you have been an MSP for 10 years, our experience is that you’re probably not following the fundamentals of the game and are losing out to your competitors because of it. Trust me when I say that fundamentals of being a successful MSP with happy Techs, raving fan clients, and the elusive work/life balance apply to small AND large MSPS. If you get the fundamentals down you can then decide how far you grow. 

In case you were thinking that this information won’t apply to you since a small MSP (less than 5 Techs) is a completely different beast than a large MSP, that would be a negative Ghostrider.  A small MSP may utilize less reporting, fewer queues, work flow rules, and such, but the fundamentals are the fundamentals are the fundamentals. So, while geared more for the small MSP, the following is for ALL MSPS.

Think I’m nuts? Vince Lombardi is one of the greatest football coaches of all time. After blowing the National Championship game in 1960, he started every season with the basics, assuming nothing. He would never lose in the playoffs again.

Take Control

As an Owner you can hopefully control the Sales Process, which Clients you choose to work with, which products you sell, etc. But what can your Techs control? The Service Delivery process.

We start with the Intake process. Our experience shows that 80% of the Chaos can be driven out of the work environment with a good intake process. That is why many of our articles focus on the Service Coordinator role as they are the core of the Service Delivery Team. They should be your 4th hire.

If you are a one-man band or just have a couple Techs, then someone still should be designated during your working hours to handle ticket triage. The Owner can do it if they have the time, or you can split the day amongst your techs. The important thing is that everyone knows who has the intake duty for that time block and that is on the schedule. And that every business hour has a designated Intake person.

Fundamentals – Ticket Priorities

In week 1 I gave an overview of the Triage process. This is taking a new, raw ticket, distilling it to the just the facts, classifying it, and sending it on its way. Please see that for the fundamentals of what to do when a ticket comes in.

In week 2, we covered the needs for an accurate Autotask database of all your Clients and their Contacts. A fundamental of Autotask or any PSA is having all your Clients and contacts in the system. (if you didn’t you can watch this video on how to export what you have to send to your clients so they can correct).

Last week, we not only talked about the importance of ticket statuses, but gave you the list that we coach our Clients to use. Status is important to maintain an accurate SLA clock in Autotask and also so that Management, Techs, and Clients all know the status of a ticket without having to bug the Tech.

SLA event,” you ask? Oh, yes. The Service Level Agreement is literally an agreement between the MSP and the Client on the services to be delivered and the timeframes they will be delivered in. We will talk about them in the future. Overachievers, I wrote about them here and Autotask talks about them here. 

Autotask maps to a service delivery framework called ITIL, which Wikipedia quotes IBM defining as,  “The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of practices and a framework for IT activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM) that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of the business.”

Under ITIL, “First Response” is the time to Triage, “Resolution Plan” is the time when a ticket goes "In Progress,” and “Resolve” is when it goes in a complete status.

Okay, so now that you have those Fundamentals down, let’s talk about the next thing the Tech or triage person needs to know when entering a ticket: The Priority.

Priority is a guideline using ITIL's impact/urgency matrix to determine the urgency we will work the ticket. ITIL promotes dividing all IT work into two groups and differentiates by calling them Incidents (Break/Fix, Reactive, etc.) and Service Requests (everything else). An Incident is defined as a network, system, or device that is not working as designed. Therefore, a Service Request is for a network, system, or device that is working as designed.   We use the data field "Priority" to further define the characteristics of the requests.  

As you know, all tickets are not created equal. Yet, we use the same process for all: dump them in a queue and let the Techs figure it out. Using one workflow, one outcome, and one engagement process for all Client requests leads to Chaos, inefficiency, and Client disappointment.

By segmenting Customer’s Request into different workflows we divide and conquer the service delivery issues (more on the process here). Once the customer requests are segmented, we can:

  • Develop and optimize different SOPs for each workflow

  • Use automation to organize the list of tickets so we know what needs to be worked on next

  • Benchmark, track, and improve our overall response SLA performance across all customers and all types of requests

  • Have a high level of confidence that all customers are been treated equally across all their request types

 

From our experience, the best way to identify, categorize, and guide customer requests into the right workflows is by using the Autotask Priority Field. Once the customer request is prioritized, the Support Team knows what is expected, the software can see the difference between one customer request and another, and automation can kick in and help. None of these workflows change for managed or non-managed customers.

Over the years of working with MSPs from around the world, Advanced Global has identified 11 recommended Workflows that all MSPs should be using.  Some MSPs may have more than 11, as they use Autotask tickets for Sales, Procurement, vCIO engagements, etc. 

The first step is to divide all customer requests into four workflows, and then divide Incidents and Moves/Adds/Changes (M/A/Cs) into four sub-workflows each.

The Autotask documentation for adding priorities and adding colors and icons is here.

For incidents you want (highlighted in bold):

  • Critical Emergency: Network, Server, Core Application is down. Set by God, not by us or the client.

  • High: Latency, or other network degradation, key personnel/device

  • High Backup - all backup issues of any kind go here.

  • Medium: The default when creating a ticket. A single user is having an issue and there is a workaround.

  • Standard: Another way of saying low priority without offending the user. Things like my scanner isn't working and I need it fixed by next Tuesday.

 

For Service Requests you will want to cover projects, recurring tasks, installations, and then divide up the remaining service requests by the time they take and name them appropriately. You can then set internal SLAs on those times and report on them.

Okay, so you’ve got 11 workflows (Small MSPs can get away with 8ish), and what does that get you?

  • It is now far easier to optimize the operation by dividing the mound of tickets into small groups by workflow

  • The software can now tell the difference between one ticket and another; therefore, some processes can be automated

  • With automation, the Techs will know what to work on next, and the Client will know who and when to expect engagement

  • It is far easier to tell which tickets are stuck and need intervention

 

Once we apply the 11 workflows, we can use the PSAutomation of Autotask to help us Find Freedom from All Those Tickets. And isn’t that why you bought Autotask in the first place?

Note: We’ve learned that if you want to optimize the Service Delivery operation, you should make sure all Client requests are being properly Triaged within SLA. SLA speaks to the responsiveness of the Service Delivery Team and is the beginning of proper Triage. Coupling this with a quality check is where a Service Manager needs to start their focus on improving profitability.  To help we have the SLA Performance Report and Backlog of Tickets Report.

Summary

The foundation of a successful MSP, small or large, is the fundamentals. So, we’re going back to the basics to make sure we’re all on the same page. Your homework for next week is to get your Priorities setup in Autotask and come back next week as we continue with Chapter 5.

Go do it now. 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 with our Service Delivery Fundamentals Improvement program.

Talk to us: info@agmspcoaching.com

Stephen & Co

Resources: 

Cassidy Stier
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Finding Freedom From: All Those Tickets: Roles & Work Types 
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Finding Freedom From: All Those Tickets - Part 3