Hit the MSP Trifecta & Tame the Chaos via Data-Driven Tech Scheduling
Ever been to a horse race? If so, you’ve probably heard the announcer talk about the amount paid out for the winning horse. Of course, you get a certain amount for picking the first-place winner…but you get a lot more for selecting the top three winners in order, which is called the trifecta.
It’s quite hard to make those picks, which is why the reward is so great. Fortunately, we can use data and our Core Service Delivery Improvement to eliminate Chaos in our Managed Service Delivery to hit the MSP trifecta of high client satisfaction, a happy MSP Team, and great profitability.
A Golden Nugget to Help Your MSP Win Big
Everyone wins when Chaos is shown the door. This week is another golden nugget you can immediately implement to win big. We’re going to bring Order to the Chaos of a Tech’s daily life.
Most Techs I know like to plan their days in advance. But, without a good Intake and Service Coordinator, this is next to impossible. When Techs have no idea what their next few days look like, their stress level goes up - and the quality of service goes down.
If your Service Delivery operation does not know what each Tech is working on 2-3 days in advance, read on. Yes, I know your knee-jerk reaction is that there is no way to determine what Client requests are going to come in until they get here.
And that is entirely wrong. That is having a reactive, break/fix mentality rather than a proactive, data-driven one. So, let me show you how to get to this happy place.
Reactive Work:
The first step is to break down the types of Client requests that you are taking in.
In broad strokes, they are:
Reactive work (Incidents, Break/Fix, or “not working as designed”)
Non-reactive work (everything else)
The vast majority of reactive work is completed via remote support. Therefore, dividing the total number of hours spent last month supporting reactive work by 22 (average workdays in a month) equals the number of hours of support you need each day.
Knowing who is covering those hours three days in advance is a great advantage to the MSP and provides an opportunity to drive the Chaos out of the work environment.
Note: No matter how much you want to, do not violate the guideline of setting aside enough hours three days in advance for reactive work, and designate, three days in advance, who is going to cover/be standing by for reactive work.
Non-Reactive Work:
For an MSP, following ITIL’s Service Management methodologies does not work. This is because we have too many Non-Reactive types of work that our external Clients expect us to treat like reactive work.
The Clients do not (and are not) expected to understand the nuances between break/fix and service requests. They just know they want engagement now.
For this reason, we need to treat some non-reactive work the same way we treat reactive work. But which ones, and how?
Which ones should be treated like reactive work:
I am sure many MSPs have not stopped, thought, or planned for remote support (feel free to email me for an apology if you have). From our experience, most dump the request (ticket) into a queue and tell/expect the Techs to figure it out.
If you had stopped, thought, and planned, you would quickly realize that not all requests (tickets) fit in a queue. Look at all the tickets completed last month. See which ones took longer than a few hours to complete, and you will find the ones that were not completed in a single engagement.
You will also most likely see that these tickets have multiple time entries and a lot of notes asking what is going on with this ticket. Basically, these are the ones referred to as “Kicking the can down the street”. These are the ones where too much time was needed to complete the engagement by just telling the Techs to figure it out.
These non-reactive work tickets do not fit in the support queue or play nice with the reactive work and should not be added to the Techs’ queue (A Tech should never be told to figure it out on their own). Hint: The list of tickets not fitting in the queue will have an estimated number of hours over 4.
How to treat non-reactive work like reactive work:
Now, for the tickets that will fit in the support queue, there is still a 2nd level problem. I mean, not everything can be at the top of the queue. While we can tell/assign/schedule a Tech to standby for reactive work, they still do not know what to work on next.
To do that, we need all open tickets under SLA automation management. That way, based on Urgency and Impact, the reactive work goes to the top of the queue, and the non-reactive work is in the middle to the bottom of the queue. Over time, the non-reactive work moves up through the list so that it is engaged on and completed within Client expectations.
What about the rest of the non-reactive work?
What about the non-reactive work that does not fit in the reactive work support queue? These need to be scheduled. Where? Schedule them where they fit, leaving enough available hours for the remote support (reactive work and non-reactive work that fits in the queue).
If the estimated hours are:
Less than a day’s worth of work (4-8 hours), the Client expectation is within a week
Two days’ worth of work within two weeks
More than two days’ worth of work, the Client expects to see some sort of engagement within 3 weeks (and will also want to know when to expect completion)
Summary:
We’ve demonstrated how to tell Chaos who’s boss with data-driven Technician scheduling. Using data to drive Technician scheduling is an important part of hitting the MSP Trifecta of happy Clients, happy Staff, and happy Profits.
So, how do you know if your MSP needs a scheduling overhaul?
Are your tickets being scheduled in a timely fashion?
Do the technicians know what they are going to be doing 2-3 days in advance?
If you answered no to either of these questions, then your technicians are spending too much time trying to figure out what to do when they could be completing tickets. Your horse (MSP) needs some attention before the next race.
Now that you know, you have three choices:
Go it alone. Expect it to take 7-10 years to figure out how to drive the Chaos out of your Service Delivery operation…
Hire a coach to guide you, and hit the MSP Trifecta with the Core Service Delivery Improvement roadmap - in less than a year.
Do nothing and continue living in the same chaos next week, month, year…because, hey, it’s always been like that, so why change?
The elephant in the room:
Who is Advanced Global, and why should we listen to them?
Recently someone we’ve been in communication 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:
We Are – the Autotask Global Service Delivery Authority
We Help – MSPs thrive
We Solve – Service Delivery issues, inefficiencies, and challenges by making sure:
Techs know what to work on next
Someone is managing all open tickets and driving them to completion
The staffing levels are correct, and the workload is balanced
Real-Time Time Entry is a cultural habit
The Client has a great client experience
Profit is maximized
Autotask is being fully leveraged
The historical data that is in the Autotask software is accessible to benchmark, track & USE effectively
The Service Delivery operations can scale
Projects are completed On-Time and On-Budget
The Company can grow
MSPs know what they don’t know
4. Our Tools:
Autotask “Best in Class” standard build
Our MSP robust Service Delivery SOP library
Advanced Live Reports
Expertise in providing a transformational 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.