Empowering a Service Coordinator:

To Know Where All the Technicians Are At Any Given Moment

Have you ever wondered why Chaos reigns within an MSP’s Service Delivery operation?

There are two key reasons:

  1. No one person knows where every ticket is in the journey from New to Complete

  2. No one person knows where every person is within the organization

If you’ve ever met anyone from the Advanced Global Team, you know how dedicated we are to eliminating our hated enemy #1: Service Delivery Chaos.

 In our years of experience working as MSP Team Members, we know exactly what an MSPs Service Delivery Zen environment (aka: a properly functioning MSP) looks like - and what an MSP filled with Chaos looks like. And why.

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.

Star of the Show: The Service Coordinator

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

So, how is that possible when Chaos reigns? 

Hey knucklehead, 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:

  1. The Ideal Team Player

  2. Onboarding and Training

  3. Empowering, tooling, and getting out of their way

The Ideal Team Player:

The Ideal Team Player hiring process focuses on hiring a Service Coordinator with three key qualities/characteristics:

  1. Humility

  2. Hungry

  3. People Smart

Humility

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” – Rick Warren.

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:

  1. Taking ownership of all open tickets, Techs’ Workload, and Techs’ schedules

  2. Driving a great high quality intake review and assignment process

  3. 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. As this article discusses, knowing where every Tech is  and what they are working on requires ownership of their total work life.

Hungry

Hungry is wanting to lean into the job - 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 means 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).

Onboarding and Training:

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 also ones struggling in their position) need the company to provide them with an onboarding process and Service Coordinator training for them to succeed.

The onboarding process requires three things:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. A copy of their Job Description, Role and Responsibilities, and an overview of expectations of the position.

Training comes in two flavors:

  1. Tools - mostly the PSAutomation software

  2. 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, and 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:

  1. Empowering

  1. Tooling

  2. 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), and 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:

  1. Process Systems:

    1. Single Point of Coordination

    2. A “Best in Class” intake process

      1.  Segmenting all Requests into well-defined workflows

      2. Review and assign all tickets

      3.  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)

    1. Daily morning 15-minute huddle

  4. Three Service Coordinator Dashboards

  5. 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:

  1. Change YOUR Mindset:

    1. Service Coordinator is the hub of the organization

    2. They are the Single Point of Coordination

    3. They own the Techs’ schedules

  2. Trust them to do the job:

    1. Evaluate their performance

    2. Empower them to do their job

    3. Coach, Mentor, and Support them

  3. Focus on your own MSP responsibilities, which are:

    1. Owner – go sell something

    2. Tech – work on the next Client request

    3. Project Mgr. – Finish the project on time and on budget

    4. Service Mgr. – continuous improvement of the Team and Individual performance

In summary, many MSP’s set Service Delivery Goals such as:

  • Enjoying the Freedom to Grow

  • Optimized efficiency

  • LEAN methods

  • Superior Service to the Clients

  • Reducing Employee turnover

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 and eliminate our dreaded enemy, Chaos.

Does this seem impossible at your organization? Have you been working on it for 2, 5, 10 years, or more? Help is right here: contact our team of Chaos Killers, and we are happy to guide you to Nirvana within a year.

Ready to Kill you Chaos?? Let’s chat! Schedule a call here, today, and we will be on our way!

 

 

The elephant in the room:

Who is Advanced Global, and why should we listen to them?

Recently someone we’ve communicated with since DattoCon 2018, who was faithfully reading our articles, commented that up until a few months ago, “I really did not know what Advanced Global does.” So, 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:

a.       techs know what to work on next

b.      someone is managing all open tickets and driving them to completion

c.       the staffing levels are correct, and the workload is balanced

d.      Real-Time Time Entry is a cultural habit

e.       the Client has a great client experience

f.        profit is maximized

g.       Autotask is being fully leveraged

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

i.        the Service Delivery operations can scale

j.        projects are completed On-Time and On-Budget

k.       the company can grow

l.        MSPs know what they don’t know

4)      Our Tools:

a.       Autotask “Best in Class” standard build

b.      Our MSP robust Service Delivery SOP library

c.       Advanced Autotask Live Reports

d.      Expertise in providing a transformational educational experience

 

Note: We are not philosophers; we are doers with 31+ 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.

 

Until next time – stay profitable, my friends.

Steve & Co

MSPStephen Buyzemsp, service coordinator, onboarding