Service Coordinator Dashboard
The Technician Dashboard (discussed in last week’s article) is an extremely useful tool for keeping up with your customer requests. It allows the Technician to focus on what they need to do next, all while having some awareness of what could go wrong at any moment and disrupt their workday. Now, that’s great news...but what about all the other Tickets floating around - or more importantly, getting lost in some deep, dark hole? They never surface again until a Customer is upset, or the Account Manager/Owner loses trust in the Service Delivery Team and goes hunting for stuck tickets.
Enter the Solution: A Service Coordinator Dashboard
A Service Coordinator dashboard is an effective way to empower the Service Coordinator to monitor all
the open tickets in the company.
For Service Coordinators, their first priorities are:
New tickets that need to be triaged, so the remediation process works efficiently.
Followed by which Open tickets are stuck or in jeopardy of disappointing the Customer (missing SLA).
Keeping an eye on all open tickets, hours worked for the week by team member, and overall SLA performance also equips them to do a more than average job – and it might just turn them into the company’s superhero.
With that said, let's dive in and discuss the best way to use the Service Coordinator’s dashboard…
How to Use the Service Coordinator Dashboard
Welcome! This narrative will show you how to properly use the dashboard. The goal here is to provide a holistic view of all open tickets in the company: the ones the Service Coordinator is responsible for and what is most important for them to be working on. This also includes an awareness of everything else that may become front and center at any moment's notice.
Triage Queue widget
In the top left corner is the most important widget– Triage Queue. This widget is the Service Coordinator’s primary worklist. It is a list of all of the tickets that are new, and the ones that were sent to the Service Coordinator for further processing. The goal here is to keep this widget empty.
Next SLA Summary:
This widget tracks ticket flow from the cradle to the grave with the Tech engagement stage in the middle. As a Service Coordinator, this can help a great deal with keeping Customers happy by not disappointing them.
Triage SLA
The first priority is the Triage SLA. By meeting this SLA, the Techs can engage and remediate in a shorter period and have an easier time meeting the Tech engagement and completion of the SLA. Therefore, you have a better chance of not disappointing the Customer. The Techs are depending on the Service Coordinator to set the stage for success and make their lives easier.
Tech Engagement SLA
The Service Coordinator is in the best position to keep an eye on how the techs are meeting Customer expectations. If a Customer Request is coming up on a Tech Engagement SLA due date, you can take the following three steps:
Check on the assigned Tech.
- Look at where the tech is in their Ready to Engage widget and see if this is the next ticket or not.
- See if the tech is working his dashboard onsite, or if he’s not in his workspace.
If the assigned Tech is not going to get to the ticket in time, check if there is another Tech who is less busy.
If all else fails, contact the Customer, letting them know that the Techs are working with other Customers, and someone will pick up the ticket as soon as possible.
Completion SLA
The Service Coordinator is also in the best position to keep an eye on how the Techs are completing requests. If a Customer Request is coming up on a Completion SLA due date, you can take the following steps:
Check on the assigned Tech.
Look at where the tech is in their Ready to Engage widget and see if this is the next ticket or not.
See if the tech is working his dashboard onsite, or if he’s not in his workspace.
See if the Tech is struggling to complete the engagement and ask if it needs to be reassigned in order to meet expectations – review if anyone is available.
2. Contact the Customer, letting them know that the Techs are working on the issue and it is taking longer than expectedbut should be completed as soon as possible.
Out of Office this Week
This widget provides an awareness of who is working and who is not. This will save time trying to track down someone who is unavailable. Also, if you are aware of work that needs to be done, but the person doing the work is off, it gives the team an opportunity to respond in advance rather than after something goes haywire.
My Open Tickets
This widget is the one place where every non-recurring ticket that is assigned to you can be accounted for and accessed.
Total:
It depends on your operations as to how many open tickets are manageable at any one time, but in general, less than 20 per Tech is the norm. If the number is over 20 per Tech, the Service Coordinator can bring awareness to the 5 oldest tickets and assist with developing a plan to complete the engagement. Of course, this assumes that the Techs can keep up with new tickets that are also flowing into the Ready to Engage widget.
Overdue:
These are past due, so not much can be done to keep from disappointing the Customer at this point. The best thing to do is to keep the number from growing by focusing on the other widgets.
Open Critical:
Critical Customer Requests have a different protocol (SOP) than any other request. While an all-hands-on-deck approach is too disruptive to the operation, making sure everyone is aware that a Critical Customer Request has come in goes a long way to expedite service to the Customer. When a Critical request has been received, it is the Service Coordinator who knows which person is the designated go-to person for Critical tickets. They can quickly alert them that one has come in, provide the pertinent information they need to engage immediately, and return to intaking the request. They will also inform the Customer and monitor the situation to ensure a smooth cradle-to-grave experience for the Customer.
My Customer Responded-to Tickets:
At any time, a Customer, Vendor, or Parts delivery may respond to a ticket in waiting status (there is a first time for everything). When this happens, the ticket is moved to the Ready to Engage queue. This sub-widget serves two purposes:
It alerts you that a response has come in.
It provides easy access to the ticket by clicking on the number in the circle.
All Customer Responded-to Tickets:
This sub-widget alerts you that a Customer has responded to any ticket. The Service Coordinator should click on the number in the circle to check and see if the response is to someone not available, either on PTO or on-site.
Service Coordinator Help Needed:
This is a status or UDF that is used to alert the Service Coordinator that assistance is needed, but what is needed does not merit moving the ticket to the Triage Widget. How this sub-widget is used is different from one organization to another.
All Waiting Status Tickets
When a ticket is put into waiting status (Waiting Customer, Waiting Vendor, Waiting Parts, etc.) the SLA clock is paused. The pausing of the clock removes the Next SLA Event Due date/time. The removal of the date/time drops the ticket to the top or bottom of the Ready to Engage widget and is, therefore, out of priority order. For this reason, we move the ticket to the Waiting Status Tickets widget and prioritize the order by Last Activity Date. Be sure to monitor this Widget - if the Last Activity Date is more than a few days old and the Customer has not responded, pick up the ticket and see what can be done to move it along. For example: ping the Customer, check on the parts, ping the vendor, etc. If you know when the response you are waiting for will come in, feel free to move the status to “On Hold” and change the due date to when you expect the response. This will move the ticket out of Waiting Status and then, when the due date is reached, put it back in the assigned Techs Ready to Engage widget.
On Hold Tickets:
There is a widget where on-hold tickets are placed off current views. This is on purpose and provides a place to put non-project tickets where engagement is in the future, mostly due to a Customer’s request. By putting the ticket status equal to On Hold and setting a future date, Workflow Rules will remove the ticket from view and return it to the Ready to Engage widget when the due date arrives. The Service Coordinator is the only one who has a widget showing all tickets on-hold. This puts the Service Coordinator in a position to monitor the Workflow Rules in the event they misfire (I know, I know...that never happens). The Service Coordinator should also receive a Live Report showing any On-Hold tickets with Due Dates in the past. Service Calls Scheduled This is a list of the next Scheduled Service Calls. The information helps to know who may be on-site or committed to remote engagements, but they are also times/dates promised to the Customer.
Team Hours Worked This Week
This is a collaborative, positive habit-forming widget. It is a subtle reminder of who has not put any time in yet today, or even worse, yet this week. It also provides you an opportunity to be a good team member and encourage the rest of the support team to get their documentation and time in on a real-time basis. For a Service Coordinator, this is especially important if the Tech is a new hire. It allows the Service Coordinator to assist with the onboarding of a new hire as well as grooming good work habits of Real-Time time entry.
Projects
This is a list of project tickets. The Service Call Scheduled widget shows when to work on them, but it’s also easy to access the project information when needed. It is prioritized by the due date, but that doesn’t mean it is in the order the projects need to be worked on - just the order in which they need to be completed.
Contracts Expiring (Next 120 Days)
It is a never-ending battle encouraging Customers to renew their contracts. It starts by alerting the Account Manager when they are coming up for renewal, so they can prepare a proposal and send it to the Customer for signature. If the Contract has not been renewed 30-days before expiration, it would be a good idea to have the Service Coordinator reach out to the Customer and encourage them to “Sign the Papers, Old Man.”
Completed Tickets Waiting Billing Review:
I am used to the Sales team being responsible for reviewing all tickets/invoices before invoicing the Customer. One MSP has the Service Coordinator do the review, which makes sense and works well. Who else - besides the Tech who did the work - knows more about what is going on or why things are the way they are on the Service Delivery side other than the Service Coordinator? They are in the best position to determine if the coding in the ticket is correct or not.