Why a Service Coordinator is Indispensable!!
Would you drive your car to your mechanic, park it out front and just walk away?
Of course not.
Your mechanic has an intake process – owner, contact information, make and model, license plate, problem, and expectations. Maybe even a promise when you can pick the car back up.
So why do you not treat your Customer’s request the same way?
Actually, why bother having an intake person at all?
I mean, you could just have the automation (RMM and Incoming Email Processing) dump the tickets in the queue and let the techs figure it out.
Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? (Please tell me this is not really happening at your MSP right now.)
Marketing can claim we put the Customer first, that Service to the Customer is what makes us special, and money can be saved not having Service Coordinators.
The clients won’t really notice anyway…right?
Service Coordinators are Indispensable
Sorry, we vehemently disagree. Without a Service Coordinator, chaos reigns, and that chaos costs you a significant amount of profit. This is why we strongly believe that a Service Coordinator is indispensable!
We also believe this because a Service Coordinator is so much more than a dispatcher.
And while “Director of First Impressions” is a great job title, all the client cares about is: “When are you going to fix my S… (Stuff)?” So, having someone to properly intake a client’s request and take ownership of all open tickets, driving them from new to completion, is Superior Service to the Customer.
Now we understand that if you only have 3 Techs, it may not make financial sense to hire a Service Coordinator. It absolutely makes sense from a “Service to the Customer” perspective; however, deferring the hire maybe what needs to be done to keep the lights on.
The 4th hire, however, better be a Service Coordinator - or you will need to answer to Carol! Even in a 3 Tech world, the concept of a Service Coordinator is needed, and can be approximated in a split between two people: one of the Techs trained to properly intake client requests and you, the owner.
The Service Coordinator Dashboard is what you’ve been searching for
For you, using our recommended Service Coordinator Dashboard is what you have been looking for. It is used for so much more than dispatching tickets.
From the dashboard view, you can:
See how long new tickets have been sitting without proper intake
Which tickets are coming up on Next SLA Event Due Date
Which tickets have been waiting for more than 2 days
Which tickets are on hold
Which tickets the Customer has responded to
Which tickets need scheduling
Who has not turned in any Time Entries today
How many clients responded happily, neutrally, or are disappointed
Who is on vacation this week
Which Contracts are expiring
Which Time Entries are ready for A&P
Not to mention how many tickets are
Open
Overdue
Critical
Or request your attention
In other words, all the things a Service Coordinator does in addition to review, assign, and dispatch.
Hiring a Service Coordinator is a MUST
All of a sudden, the Service Coordinator, someone available to do all this work for you, sounds pretty indispensable, don’t they?
But wait, there’s more! For a one-time hire, that’s not all you get. That versatile Service Coordinator also does all this:
Monitors the Techs workload - # of tickets and estimated time
Keeps the Techs dashboard in pristine working order
Talks the Customers off the ledge and makes them aware Managed Service Customers come first (I know it is a new concept)
It lets you know when a Tech or Customer are stressing
Oh my goodness, there is so much more. Your Service Coordinator keeps everything running smoothly while you are out signing up new clients, selling projects, and taking your family to the beach.
Your Service Coordinator frees up your time so you can get billing done actually have time to eat with the family on Friday night. And your Service Coordinator is spotting those trends so you can proactively fix client issues – both technical and personal, before you get that dreaded client call asking for the passwords.
Can You Afford NOT to Hire a Service Coordinator?
The bottom line is not whether you can afford to hire a Service Coordinator, but how you cannot afford not to hire a Service Coordinator.
We have found that a Service Coordinator will make your expensive, highly paid Techs 10% more efficient. Do your own math and you will see that it financially makes sense at 3 Techs to make the 4th hire a Service Coordinator.
But the most important reason to hire a Service Coordinator sooner rather than later is that a Service Coordinator is guaranteed to lower your golf score by 10 points or more. now that is why they are indispensable!!
How do we know how to help MSPs grow their business? Because we have 22+ years of MSP Service Delivery Coordinator/Manager experience on staff, and 17+ years Autotask System Administration experience. Which is another way of saying we have been there and done that, and we know how to leverage the Autotask software to Resolve Service Delivery Issues.
** A special shout out to my good friend, Matthew Adkins: thanks for the idea and editorial help – from one Service Delivery Gladiator to another as we fight the good fight and bring order to chaos. **
