What would it look like if your Techs were “Ready to ENGAGE?”
Welcome back, Autotask Gladiators!
Wondering what we’re covering today? I’m so glad you asked:
What 2023 is all about for your MSP
Engage! Are your techs ready to go?
The #1 complaint in the MSP industry
What it’s worth to be 10% more productive
How to fix the Ready to Engage Widget
What to do when you’re stuck
As we embrace fall in the United States and all the changes the season brings, I am reminded of back in January when I offered up my bold plan to “grow your MSP in ’23” with these articles specifically designed to grow your MSP and improve operational efficiency.
Have you been working the plan? Have you been reading and implementing? Are you seeing Growth? More Profits? Have you been building an impressive roster of raving clients AND happy Techs?
If so, awesome! In our last few months, we’re going to try and improve things even further. If you haven’t been enjoying success, or perhaps joined us late and are trying to catch up, you’ve got three months, so NOW is the time to saddle up and engage.
Speaking of engaging, many of you may remember an 80’s television show called “Star Trek: The Next Generation” featuring the charismatic Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Whenever the USS Enterprise was about to go into warp drive, he would give the destination and say, “engage!” The Enterprise would then leap into action – unless, of course, that week’s plot was about some force keeping the ship from moving and the crew having to band together to fix the ship and save themselves.
The #1 complaint in the MSP World
How about your MSP? When you say, “Engage!” are the Techs ready to go? Or does your ship limp along on impulse power?
The #1 complaint in the MSP industry is that "Techs do not know what to work on next!"
The #1 sin in the MSP Industry is that we do not hold the Techs Accountable.
The #1 solution in the MSP Industry is a Ready to Engage widget where tickets assigned to the Tech are in SLA Next Event Due Date order.
If the MSP provides the Techs with a Ready to Engage widget, the Tech will always know what to work on next, without the wasted time (4 hours per week) searching through work lists trying to prioritize tickets. They will be 10% more productive.
What is it worth to be 10% more productive?
About $600 per week, or $31,200 per year per Tech. Which is 6X the cost of fixing the problem, and why Advanced Global can offer a money-back guarantee on the Drive to Thrive program. Where else can you get a 6X guaranteed Return on your Investment?
Now, you may have the Ready to Engage widget sitting all pretty on an Autotask dashboard, but the Techs are not using it. Looking closer, you can see they have some good reasons for it.
The top Ticket is either missing the due date (so how in the world can we be assured that this is the most important Ticket to work on?). Or, the Ticket is older than dirt and heading to its first birthday (in which case the Client is already disappointed). Would it not be better if the Tech worked on one due today so as not to disappoint another Client?
How to fix the Ready to Engage Widget
There is the crux of the problem – the Ready to Engage widget is not working properly. So, it needs to be fixed. But how?
First things first: When you look at a Ready to Engage widget, there are typically three things that could be wrong with it:
Missing Next SLA Due Date
The next SLA Due Date is more than a day overdue
Should the Ticket have been Scheduled in the Calendars in the first place
There are less than 8 or more than 12 tickets in the widget**
**Note: 8 to 12 tickets is a half to a full day's worth of work. If there is less than a half a day's worth of work, the Tech slows down and takes it easy. If there is more than a full day's worth of work, the Tech speeds up and starts cutting corners, leading to poor quality. Techs work at an optimal speed with no pressure with 8-12 tickets in the Ready to Engage widget.
Now for the But How:
#1: If the Next SLA Due Date is missing, it is most likely because:
The Ticket has been re-opened
There is no SLA on the Ticket, or
The workflow (not to be confused with WFR) does not call for an SLA
If the Ticket has been reopened, here are the steps to correct it:
Edit the Ticket
Open the History to the SLA tab
Remove the Resolve Date and Time
Save the History, and Save the Ticket
If the Ticket does not have an SLA on it, here are the steps to correct it:
Research the Clients Contracts to make sure the Default Service Desk Contract has a Category and an SLA
Ensure the No-Contract WFR is working properly
If the Workflow by Priority Field does not have an SLA configured for it, then the Ticket does not belong in the Ready to Engage widget and should be scheduled instead. The very act of adding a Service Call to the Ticket will remove it from the Ready to Engage widget.
#2: If the due date is more than a day old, there is a high probability that the Tech will skip over it and pick a ticket that has not yet disappointed the Client. In this case, the best thing to do is pull the Ticket out of the widget by scheduling some time on the Techs calendar to work on the Ticket.
If you do not know how much time to schedule, schedule 2 hours with a description in the Service Call that "if the work cannot be completed within this time period, please let the Service Coordinator know (you do have Service Coordinators – right?) and return the ticket to triage."
#3: It is imperative that as a Service Coordinator drives all open tickets from new to closed (their #1 responsibility), that they maintain the workload across all Techs. When it comes to the Ready to Engage widget, it is their job to look around for work the Techs can work on and assign it to them so it shows up in the Ready to Engage widget. If the Ready to Engage widget is overloaded, it is the Service Coordinator's job to look around for someone with the right skill set to take the assigned Ticket and balance the workload across all Techs.
If this is not possible because all Techs have more than 20 tickets each, and/or all Techs have more than 12 tickets in the Ready to Engage widget, then they need to alert the Service Manager to the problem as it is beyond the Service Coordinator’s authority to address Tech performance or hire more Techs.
Summary:
It is critical to an MSP's operation that the Service Coordinator properly maintains all the Ready to Engage widgets. Sure, you can skip it, pony up the credits, and hire a crew of Geordis, a Scotty, or even a Data (unicorn), but with a good crew that works together and some guidance and process, your MSP can do the MSP Trek, complete the missions, and load up on gold-pressed latinum. And remember, even Geordi needed someone to say, “engage.”
If the Ready to Engage widget is properly maintained, the Techs will lean into using the Autotask dashboards (and stop using the cherry-picking queue view habits). If the Techs will use the Advanced dashboards provided to them, they will Always Know What to Work on Next and organically be 10% more efficient. Advanced Global guarantees it - with a money-back guarantee.
Hopefully, that all makes sense, and you were able to follow my star chart. If you're stuck without warp power (or need the Service Delivery Forecast report), email me at info@AGMSPCoaching.com, put "I need to Engage" in the subject line, and I'll have someone reach out right away.
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 that:
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
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 41+ years of Service Delivery experience, bringing real Service Delivery Improvement change, profitability, and Best-in-class performance.
We start our engagements by offering a FREE, No-Obligation PSA Configuration Evaluation.