When to Fire Your Service Manager!

Written By Stephen Buyze

Managing Service Coordinators: a Service Manager’s #2 Responsibility

Key Takeaways:

  • A Service Manager’s many responsibilities

  • At the Strategic level, a Service Manager must…

  • The key to managing the Service Coordinator on a tactical level…

  • Advanced Global’s Service Coordinator Training disclaimer

  • Next up…what’s in the pipeline

A Service Manager’s #1 responsibility is driving profits. 

However, if your Service Manager is not taking ownership of these three things –fire them. (Or at least get them some guidance on their Role and Responsibilities…)

A Service Manager is responsible for:

  1. Holding the Service Coordinator accountable for doing their job as expected**

  2. Holding the Techs accountable for doing their job as expected**

  3. Holding the Team accountable to meet profitability expectations:

    1. Resource Utilization above 80%

    2. SLA Performance above:

      1. Triage – 97%

      2. Tech Engagement – 95%

      3. Completion – 90%

    3. Reactive Hours per Endpoint per Month to less than 1 hour of work for every 4 Endpoints

** Note: Holding someone accountable starts with having an efficient process and coaching the Employee to follow the process to the best of their ability.

 

WOW, that is a tall order! If a Service Manager did step up and take responsibility for these three things, my goodness, the Service Delivery would:

  1. Meet expectations

  2. Maximize profitability

  3. Provide a Zen work-environment

 

EXACTLY our point…

So, how does a Service Manager take ownership of managing the Service Coordinator? What does that really look like, and what tools will they need to get the job done?

First, there are two aspects to this question: Strategic and Tactical.

 

Strategic:

On the strategic level, the Service Coordinator needs the right mindset to do the job. They need to be willing and up to the challenge of taking ownership of all open tickets and driving them from “New to Complete”.

Advanced Global offers this Service Coordinator Evaluation to assist Service Managers with the tools they need to assess a Service Coordinator mindset.

The evaluation touches on the following mindset areas:

  • The importance of the Triage widget and process

  • Taking ownership of Tech Calendars and Widgets

  • Maximizing the SLA Summary Widget and balancing the Techs’ Workload

  • Leveraging the Service Coordinator Dashboards and Reports to drive all tickets from “New to Complete”

 

Tactical:

The key to managing the Service Coordinator on a tactical level is not to do their job for them or even shadow them in their job but to pick KPIs to benchmark and track for performance. Performance out of tolerance? It’s simple: use the data as a coaching/mentoring opportunity.

The 9 Service Coordinator Dashboard KPIs to benchmark and track are:

  • #1 New Tickets

  • #2 Coming up on Next SLA Due Date

  • #3 Waiting … with last Activity Date greater than 2 days ago

  • #4 On Hold with past Due Date

  • #5 Tickets without Service Calls requiring scheduling

  • #6 Non-Triage, Alert, or NOC Tickets unassigned

  • #7 Worked Hours greater than the Estimated Hours

  • #8 Maintaining the Ready to Engage Widgets

  • #9 All Open Tickets greater than 20 per Tech

 

Here are the goals for each widget in the dashboard:

Goal            Stuck Tickets:                                                                                            

<=3                #1 New Tickets                                                                                                         

<=3                          #2 Coming up on Next SLA Due Date - Overdue 

<=2                      Triage

<=9                      Tech Engagement

<=9                      Completion

<=3                #3 Waiting … with last Activity Date greater than 2 days ago 

<=3                #4 On Hold with past Due Date

<=3                #5 Tickets requiring scheduling without Service Calls

  =0               #6 Non-Triage, Alert, or NOC Tickets unassigned

<= 2x est         #7 Worked Hours greater than the Estimated Hours

<=1                #8 Maintaining the Ready to Engage Widgets 

<=1                            - no tickets with Next SLA Due Date more than 24 hrs past due

<= 20 per Tech  #9 All Open Tickets greater than 20 per Tech 

 

Note: If these widgets are not readily available to the Service Coordinator, then how in the world would you expect them to be held accountable to drive all open tickets from “New to Complete” – or the #2 responsibility of the Service Manager?

So, before a Service Manager can be held accountable for their responsibilities, you need to make sure the Service Delivery Team has the:

  1. Right Tools

  2. Right processes

  3. Data to benchmark and track performance against

Here is the Advanced Global Service Coordinator Training disclaimer, which is applicable when discussing holding the Service Manager accountable:

Providing all the Tools a Service Coordinator needs requires Service Delivery Foundation Improvements. We do our best to provide all the training needed, but if the tool is the problem, we reserve the right to propose a better solution.

 

Service Coordinator dashboards and how to hold them accountable based on the data we see in them, seem to be enough to chew on, doesn’t it?

Next week, we will dive into the Advanced Autotask Live Reports that a Service Manager needs to review to hold the Service Coordinator accountable. From there, we will turn our focus on how to manage and hold the Techs accountable, along with how to drive profitability within the organization.

 

If you cannot wait for the end of the series, email us at Info@AGMSPCoaching.com, as we are always here to help you THRIVE.

 

For what it is worth: While I (Steve) write the first draft of all the Blog Articles you see on the Advanced Global website, they are reviewed by some of the target audience before publishing (along with the typical SEO and Proofreading editors). For this one, the target audience cautioned me (Steve) that most of our audience would not know about the widgets referenced in this article.

That is a shame. My passion since 1990, when I went thru Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits Workshop, is to “Improve the work life of those around me.” In 2010, I came to the MSP industry to do just that. Yes, bottom-line profit has improved by more than 10% every year, and Client Churn was reduced by more than 50%. The fact is my focus was to drive the Chaos out of the workplace and turn it into a Zen Work Environment.

If this is what you desire for your Service Delivery Team, email me at Info@AGMSPCoaching.com.

 

The elephant in the room:  

How do we know what we know? Because we are not philosophers! We are hands-on “How To” coaches that everyday guide MSPs on how to thrive by:

  1. Fully leveraging the Autotask software

  2. Providing the “Best in Class” Standard Operating Procedures

  3. Leveraging Autotask Live Reports to hold everyone accountable

We are Thinkers and Doers with 49+ years of working for MSPs bringing real Bottom-Line Improvements, change, profitability, and Best in Class performance.

Here are a few bullet points to let anyone interested know who we are and what we do:

  1. We Are – the Autotask Global Service Delivery Authority

  2. We Help – MSPs thrive

  3. We Solve – Service Delivery issues, inefficiencies, and challenges by making sure that:

    1. MSPs know what they don’t know

    2. Techs know what to work on next

    3. Someone is managing all open tickets and driving them to completion

    4. The Client has a great client experience

    5. Real-Time Time Entry is a cultural habit

    6. Projects are completed On-Time and On-Budget

    7. Profit is maximized

    8. Autotask is being fully leveraged

    9. The staffing levels are correct, and the workload is balanced

    10. The historical data that is in the Autotask software is accessible to benchmark, track & USE effectively

    11. The Service Delivery operations can scale

    12. The Company can grow

  4. Our Tools:

    1. Autotask “Best in Class” standard build

    2. Our MSP robust Service Delivery SOP library

    3. Advanced Live Reports

    4. Expertise in providing a transformational experience

 

Note: We are not philosophers; we are doers with 49+ years of Service Delivery experience, bringing real Service Delivery Improvement change, profitability, and Best in Class performance.

 

We start by offering a FREE No-Obligation PSA Configuration Evaluation.

 

Steve

Stephen Buyze

President of Advanced Global MSP Coaching

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Managing Service Coordinators: A Service Manager’s #2 Responsibility (Part Deux)
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Service Management for MSPs