Freedom From: Yourself so the MSP can Grow
Stop Holding Yourself Back
Good Morning, Gladiators and Autotask Warriors. I say good morning as I am hoping this read is the first part of your Friday for our North American clients as you start to think about your goals and plans for the next week. If you’re in Dublin or South Africa, you have some after-lunch reading. For our friends in New Zealand and Australia, Happy Saturday!
Speaking of goals and plans: do you have any? Did those of you in the US use the Labor Day holiday to relax, refresh, and recharge? Or did you spend the day working away trying to “catch-up”?
I’m hoping you have had some time to think about the future. Perhaps you even went back and looked through my blog archive to see where to start. While we have written many articles on how to drive the chaos out of the work environment, most of them have been summarized in this eBook: Unshackled: Freedom from Service Delivery Issues.
Assuming you’ve read that, now what?
In this chaotic world, no place is more chaotic than the MSP operational environment. A few weeks ago, I introduced you to the Doom many MSPs face unless they undergo an Operational Transformation. We talked about how the biggest struggle is for MSPs growing from 4 to 10 Techs. This is because it is easy for a 0-3 Tech MSP to know Where the Techs are, what they are working on, the status of all the Clients, and “how the sausage is made.” But fast forward to a bit of growth and, if you’re not growing in a structured way, the wheels come off.
Then I asked MSP owners if you were obsessed with your MSP. Did you come up with an answer? Did you decide you are tired of excuses, ready to focus, obsess, and commit? Are you ready to take things to the next level?
This week, I ask the same question of the MSP Leadership team: “Are you obsessed about your MSP?”. I know you are all busy, but, as Craig Groeschel recently said in his talk at the Global Leadership Summit, “Busy Leaders don’t change the world. Focused Leaders do.”
Where to Start - Intake
When we first started rolling out the Operational Foundational Improvement program, Carol asked, “Where do we begin?” My response was, “Let’s start at the beginning of our Clients’ Customer Journey and guide the improvements from Cradle to Grave (meaning new to complete).”
This turned out to be more profound than we imagined. By focusing on the intake process, the majority of the Operational chaos organically disappeared. In other words, if an MSP focuses on Categorizing all Client Requests into different Workflows, then we can focus on optimizing each workflow and thereby Fully Optimizing the Operation. Thus, your MSP Service Delivery runs like a Chick-fil-A drive-through with the same commitment and attention to quality, efficiency, and “the moment” that Clients love and remember.
So, we came up with the Hybrid Intake Process. First, we had to figure out who was taking tickets and managing them. I’m asked all the time if it is best to have billable or non-billable Employees be the point of contact for new Client requests. The debate goes back and forth, with pros and cons on both sides of the conversation. However, our own research and years of working with MSPs says the Best-in-Class answer is both. The “Hybrid Intake Process” leverages the pros of having Techs answer the phone and email and the pros of having a Service Coordinator create, review, and assign the requests. It works like this:
Set up a dedicated Support Queue in Autotask.
Set up a Help@ Incoming Email Processing and have all tickets flow to the Support Queue.
Set up a Help Desk Phone #.
Add a “New Ticket Widget” to the Help Desk Tech’s dashboards.
Add a Chat Agent to the Managed Service Clients’ End User desktops.
Secure Managed Service Clients’ End User swag with Logo, Help Desk Phone #, HelpDesk@ URL, and “Call, Email, or Chat for Help” printed on it; and provide to the Managed Service Clients in a quantity that covers all Employees.
Have all other Client Requests flow to the Triage/Service Coordinator..
This works for the Managed Client as most of their requests are the simple, quick-hit type of Client requests; therefore, they receive an expedited response with very little overhead for the MSP. For the non-managed customer this is a no-brainer. They are not paying for expedited service; therefore, they should not receive it. For anything else, the Service Coordinator is there to handle.
For more information: What Chick-fil-A has to do with your MSPs Intake Process — Advanced Global (agmspcoaching.com)
Summary
What I list above doesn’t sound that hard, right? In fact, it’s Step 1 of my Drive to Thrive Process. And if you can do this step, you can do Step 2, and Step 3, 4, and 5.
If you have all the steps provided to you, then it’s easier to go from busy, busy, busy to FOCUSED, isn’t it? And if you’re focused and making progress, it’s easier to dump the excuses, become obsessed, and commit.
“But Steve, I’m so busy! I don’t have time as I’m always in a meeting or working tickets or dealing with stuff.” I hear you. Our summer version of Drive to Thrive is self-paced with video delivery and drop-in meetings with me twice a week and the “virtual peer group” of the Service Delivery Gladiator’s Community. You can also built it yourself and just join the Gladiator Community for only $47 a month and get access to everything you need to do it yourself (includes my library and weekly group “Ask the Experts” calls).
Stop Holding Yourself Back. The choice is yours. Darren Hardy says, “You only need to take a series of tiny steps, consistently, over time to radically improve your life.” Are you going to take your first small step now? Are you ready to obsess about the MSP? Or are you too busy keeping up with the Kardashians?
Resources are right here:
Service Delivery Gladiator’s Community: Home - The Service Delivery Gladiators (agmspcoaching.com)
Unshackled e-book: https://www.agmspcoaching.com/unshackled
(Learn how to apply the 6 keys to MSP Service Delivery Optimization)
Talk to me: info@agmspcoaching.com
Steve & Co