Solution to an overloaded tech, while other techs are coasting

Meet Jason. Jason is a hard-working tech who does a great job and is generally quite efficient. But lately, Jason’s productivity has been down. Way down. What’s going on? Jason has too many tickets! 

This is something we see all the time when working with MSP owners and service managers to eliminate chaos like this in the workplace.  The reasons can be complicated, and what to do about it is even more complicated.  But digging into this is the only way to keep Jason from getting frustrated to the point of giving his notice.

So, let’s dive in.

Technician workload rebalancing SOP:

The reason a tech like Jason is overworked, has too many tickets, and is struggling to keep up, while other techs seem to be coasting could be because:

1)    The tech is very good and is hogging all the tickets

2)    The tech is struggling and is being assigned tickets outside their skillset

3)    They’re a project engineer who doesn’t prioritize escalated tickets

4)    They’re the owner’s or customer’s favorite go-to tech

Whatever the reasons for the overloaded tech situation, finding a solution requires a multifaceted approach. Ticket count by itself doesn’t tell the whole story as estimated hours need to also be taken into consideration.  Ticket workflow is also important, as one Project ticket typically has the same workload as 24-32 Incident tickets.  The skillset of the techs also needs to be taken into consideration at the time of Triage and workload rebalancing. And ‘overdue’ in the context of ticket status can be misleading, as it can be manually reset unless under SLA automation control; a backlog list of tickets is a more accurate reflection of tickets needing intervention.

Because we’re talking about data that’s fluid and changing at a moment’s notice, we can turn to Autotask dashboards as the solution/tool to resolve this complicated situation.  It’s very easy to construct a workload dashboard.  One that shows Total Open Tickets by tech, Total Ready to Engage Tickets by tech, and Total Overdue Tickets per tech, Total Estimated Hours per tech, and Total Estimated Hours due today per tech.

The first three widgets give a clear picture of ticket counts per tech and the next two provide information on the estimated work hours on each tech.  Two other widgets can help provide a better understanding of the team workload for today the Scheduled Service Calls Today and Today’s PTO.  It also helps to have the SLA Summary widget on the workload dashboard when it comes to the rebalancing process.

With this tool in-hand, one can start reading the story the dashboard is telling.  For example, which tech has the most Open Tickets, Overdue Tickets and most Estimated Hours Due Today?  This scenario would highlight when a Tech needs workload rebalancing.

During the next chapter in this story, note which techs have the least Open Tickets, Overdue Tickets and less than 6 Estimated Hours Due Today.  These will be the go-to techs as we try to rebalance the workload.

Before moving on in the process, it’d be good to note how Projects and Installations play into this scenario.   Projects, and to a lesser degree, Installs, have very few tickets and may or may not have hours due today.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean they must be worked on today, in which case they must be scheduled with a future appointment in a tech’s Autotask calendar.

Side Note: Scheduling all Projects and Installs in the Autotask calendar is to establish and protect ample uninterrupted hours required to complete the work on-time and on-budget.  It also provides broad visibility and transparency across the organization of how the time is to be spent, further reinforcing its importance.  This is the only way to drive the chaos out of the work environment. 

The third chapter in the story of analyzing the Workload Dashboard is to note who’s scheduled to work directly with clients today and who’s out on PTO, which informs who is and who isn’t available to take work from an overworked tech.

From here, the process gets easier but no less complicated.  Moving any ticket would be helpful, but which ticket would be the most helpful?  A deeper dive is needed to answer to this question and having the SLA automation fully managing all open non-project tickets is essential.  There are two lists of tickets that need to be compared and triangulated to know which ticket is best to be moved:  The tickets coming up on Next SLA Event Due Date from the SLA Summary Widget and the tickets in the overloaded tech’s Ready to Engage widget.  In comparing these two lists, tickets about to be missed are the ones that may be best to move to another tech. Before making the final decision on which ticket(s) to move, evaluate what the overloaded tech is working on to determine how soon they could engage on the ticket(s) which are ‘move consideration candidates’.  If the techs have mastered the best-practice of updating ticket status as they engage and disengage, this can be done without disturbing the tech – and if not message them, without apology. 

Once the ideal candidate ticket to-be-moved has been identified, it’s critical to then consider the skillset of each tech, to ensure the ticket will be handled properly.  In very nimble 2-3 tech shops this is typically simple and top-of-mind for everyone (hopefully without disturbing anyone to confirm).  As the MSP scales up, having a tech skillset matrix can be very informative in simplifying this process.

The Service Coordinator can use the tech skillset matrix to determine the best available tech for the ticket, to ensure they’re helping resolve the overload situation and not creating another overworked tech. Once the ticket’s been moved, the Service Coordinator continues to use the Autotask Workload Dashboard as described above until the work has been distributed as evenly as possible.

Of course, another way to make Jason’s life easier and keep him from quitting, is to engage Advanced Global to work with your team to build out the needed automation and dashboards so that your techs always know what they should be working on, your Service Coordinator always has their pulse on the ticket flow, and the MSP is consistently meeting its obligations  to the client.

For information on Advanced Global’s Service Coordinator Foundation training or  Service Delivery Foundational Improvement program (or just a free evaluation to see where your MSP ranks), click the link below or send us an email to info@agmspcoaching.com, and we’ll be happy to help.

- Steve & Co