Get out of My Way! Your Service Coordinator is Begging You!
Welcome back, Autotask Warriors! Thanks for staying with us.
Today, we’re talking ALL about a key player in the MSP, the Service Coordinator. We’ll walk you through:
Series recap: Where are you in the adventure?
Let’s talk: Chaos & Your MSP
A memorable analogy you won’t forget
The Hub of the MSP: The Service Coordinator
Profile of the Ideal Team Player
3 Keys to a Successful Onboarding Process
Now, Empower, Tool…& GET OUT OF THE WAY!
What comes next in the journey
By this point in the series, anyone implementing even half of what we’ve discussed here this year should be seeing noticeable gains in your MSP’s productivity, Client satisfaction, Tech happiness, and (here’s that word you’re not supposed to use in public) Profit.
Of course, I hope you’ve implemented everything and are well on your way to being able to retire and buy that private island. If you aren’t seeing measurable gains, then please reach out ASAP so my team can get involved: [email protected]
On to our fun adventure for the week… First, Matt wanted me to mention the last article on MSP staff mental health. We were floored that there were two cybersecurity sessions at ChannelCon on mental issues that are more and more prevalent in the IT service community. We want to make sure we give a platform to some of that excellent information. This is a serious problem, so PLEASE go read last week’s article - the resources provided could save a life.
Speaking of Matt, he was reading through some back articles in our exclusive Gladiator Community and came across one about “Empowering a Service Coordinator.” He asked me to reprint some of the information here as he strongly believes that if people will just get out of the Service Coordinator’s way, much Chaos can be avoided (hence the title of this article). Since we’ve spent so much time already talking about the Service Manager this year, it seemed like a wise idea to focus on the Service Coordinator’s work.
First, let’s talk about Chaos & Your MSP
Do you know what Chaos Theory is? Wikipedia has a very long description that will make your head hurt, but this one line on the page best covers it: “Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.”
Sounds like the workings of an MSP to me, don’t you think? If you’ve been reading this column for long, you know I’ve written extensively on how to remove Chaos from the MSP – after all, that’s what my dedicated team of MSP Coaches work on every day.
A Memorable Way to Think of the Service Coordinator
Matt suggests thinking of the Service Coordinator as your favorite science-fiction time traveler (Dr. Who, perhaps) or navigator (think slipstream in the show Andromeda) riding the rails of interconnections within the Chaos to drive tickets from creation to timely resolution.
And just like no one on the USS Discovery would dream of getting in the way of Lt. Commander Stamets when navigating through the mycelial network, one shouldn’t get in the Service Coordinator’s way when the smooth operation of the MSP depends on them.
Chaos reigns in an MSP for two key reasons:
No one person knows where every ticket is in the journey from New to Complete.
No one person knows where every person is within the organization.
Now for small Tech Shops, this is no big deal – all the tickets are in one queue, one Tech is on-site, and the other one is off today. But for larger shops of 4 Techs or more, the problem increases logarithmically with growth.
Enter the Star of the Show: The Service Coordinator
Know this: the hub of any well-run MSP is the Service Coordinator position.
A good Service Coordinator:
takes ownership of every open ticket, driving them from New to Completion
knows where all the Techs are and what is on their plate for the day
How is that possible when Chaos reigns?
Easy. Chaos reigns because the Service Coordinator does not know where all the Techs are and what they are doing that day.
Once the systems are put in place so the Service Coordinator can do their job,Chaos will be driven out of the organization, and the Service Delivery Team will be working in a Zen environment. And yes, Advanced Global can guarantee these results.
Nirvana starts with hiring the right person for the job. There are three key components involved:
The Ideal Team Player
Onboarding and Training
Empowering, tooling, and getting out of their way
A Profile of the Ideal Team Player
The Ideal Team Player hiring process focuses on hiring a Service Coordinator with three key qualities/characteristics:
Humility
Hungry
People Smart
Humility
In the case of a Service Coordinator, this means not focusing on the volume of work, responsibilities, or issues that need to be resolved, but actively:
Taking ownership of all open tickets, Techs’ Workload, and Techs’ schedules
Driving a great high quality intake review and assignment process
Driving all Stuck Tickets from New to Complete
When we talk about Techs’ schedules, we use the term loosely. We do not limit the focus to calendar, but also, what is in their Ready to Engage widget, Waiting widget, and Backlog List of Tickets.
Hungry
Hungry is about wanting to lean into the job. It means not just taking on the workload to “get it done” - but also having a strong desire to learn and grow. The ideal person wants to continually discover more efficient ways of getting the work done, both for themselves as well as the Techs they serve. It also means being committed to providing Superior Service to the Clients the MSP serves.
People Smart
People Smart is a fine balance between knowing when to hold a Tech accountable to get the work done as expected - and when to back off and respect the skills the Tech brings to the table (and what it takes for them to meet their responsibilities).
3 Keys to a Successful Onboarding Process
Once hired, very few Service Coordinators can carve out and be effective with their responsibilities independently. Very few have a sixth sense of what they need, how to get it, and how to leverage those resources to drive all Open Tickets from New to Complete. Most new hire Service Coordinators (and ones struggling in their position) need the company to provide them with an onboarding process and Service Coordinator training for them to succeed.
A successful on boarding process requires three things:
Overview of the organization, including meeting as many people as possible. This way, they will know who in the organization they can turn to for help busting through the roadblocks they encounter. Hint: this may take a week or two depending on the size of the organization.
Overview of their space, tools provided to them, and the Team they are assigned to, including any mentor or non-direct manager in a matrix organizational structure.
A copy of their Job Description, Role and Responsibilities, and an overview of expectations of the position.
Training comes in two flavors:
Tools - mostly the PS Automation software
Processes – mostly the “Best in Class” Service Delivery SOPs that provide them with the knowhow to drive all tickets from “New” to Completion.”
Empowering, tooling - & getting out of their way
The Service Coordinator / Dispatcher is the hub of the company. If this person does not handle the Service Coordinator / Dispatcher job, no matter what the rest of the Team does, the Customer will be disappointed, and Chaos will reign. The process to get there involves:
Empowering
Tooling
Getting Out of Their Way
Empowering
The Service Coordinator must be the Single Point of Coordination (SPoC). This includes the authority and responsibility to review and assign all requests (with oversight as necessary).They also must have total control of the Tech’s calendar and work schedule. Yes, the Techs and maybe the Owner can have input, but the Service Coordinator needs to conduct the orchestra.
Service Coordinator / Dispatcher daily duties should be reviewed, adjusted if needed, and accepted. The Service Coordinator / Dispatcher is one of three Autotask Application/System Admins and needs to know how to maintain the Dashboards, WFRs, and Holiday Sets in Autotask as well as Renew Live Report Schedules and give Client Portal access.
Tooling
Process Systems:
Single Point of Coordination
A “Best in Class” intake process:
Segmenting all Requests into well-defined workflows
Review and assign all tickets
Depending on the workflow
2. Adding the ticket to the Ready to Engage widget
3. Adding the ticket to the Tech’s Calendars (Hint: use TimeZest)
Daily morning 15-minute huddle
Three Service Coordinator Dashboards
Leveraging the Advanced Autotask Live Reports
Getting Out of Their Way
Getting out of the way of the right person in the right Service Coordinator seat is easy:
Change YOUR Mindset:
Service Coordinator is the hub of the organization
They are the Single Point of Coordination
They own the Techs’ schedules
Trust them to do the job:
Evaluate their performance
Empower them to do their job
Coach, Mentor, and Support them
Focus on your own MSP responsibilities, which are:
Owner – go sell something
Tech – work on the next Client request
Project Mgr. – Finish the project on time and on budget
Service Mgr. – continuous improvement of the Team and Individual performance
Conclusion
MSPs have a lot of goals when it comes to Service Delivery. You want:
optimized efficiency
happy clients with great SLA numbers
happy Techs rocking out tickets
and oh yeah, you’d like to make some money along the way
An essential element in achieving many of these goals is an empowered, hungry, and trained Service Coordinator that is allowed and encouraged to be the hub of the organization – all so you can eliminate the dreaded enemy, Chaos.
This means GETTING OUT OF THE SERVICE COORDINATOR’ S WAY! They are begging you to let them do their jobs and eliminate Chaos. But they can’t do it alone. They do need your help.
If that seems impossible at your organization or you’ve been working on it for 2, 5, 10 years or more with no results, then it’s time to break the glass, pull the alarm handle, and contact our team of Chaos Killers, and we will be happy to guide you to Nirvana within a year. Email us today, and we will be on our way!
(By the way, if you liked this article from our Gladiator’s Community, then you should become a member for access to this and many more resources, plus exclusive access to me and my team. )