Not only should MSPs be looking out for their customers, but it’s important that the employees enjoy their workplace relationship too. When employees groan about going to work, it’s clear that the business is failing them and not fulfilling their needs.
As an MSP owner, ensuring employees are happy when going to work is an exponentially good thing. It improves morale, productivity, and employee retention – which produces a higher quality of service offered to customers.
Here is how to get started.
Work On Preventing Burnout
Burnout is a direct result of staff being overworked or feeling like it. An environment can instill that feeling in various ways, such as a poorly managed ticketing system, a manager encouraging overtime pay, or a workplace that’s distracting and not conducive for work.
An MSP can thrive by tackling those issues and ensure staff are positively focused on dealing with tickets at a reasonable pace. They should be engaged and present when dealing with customers. This can be broken down into three stages:
- Over-staff the help desk – when there is a strong help desk, then everything will run smoother long term. Making sure the front-line is over prepared ensures that even during peak busy hours, work is steady.
- Break up ring groups – to avoid distractions, ring groups should be dismantled as they are the largest distractions. These degrade the quality of service as well which affects customer satisfaction.
- Auxiliary tasks – the best MSPs don’t let resources go to waste. Even during downtime, technicians are checking missing documents, policies, expiry dates, contacting clients for updates or doing some routine maintenance. Always having something to do is key.
Have A Dispatcher Automate Procedures
When an MSP lacks a dispatcher, they lack a supervisor to look over the help desk. With a lack of oversight comes employees doing whatever they feel is right and correct and can cause problems to MSPs.
When a dispatcher is present, it holds technicians accountable and keeps procedures consistent and efficient. Dispatchers are especially helpful in:
- Checking status of tickets.
- Delegating responsibilities through ticket and task assignments.
- Enforcing the standard system put in place by help desk managers.
- Keeping clients in the loop of statuses on issues.
Having a dispatcher ultimately creates more ownership on solving problems and ensure actions are taken immediately. Beyond that, dispatchers can also guide technicians and help them grow and improve.
That knowledge can also be helpful in making system-wide changes as technicians will have the knowledge and can make real changes to the company. This empowers employees and makes them feel valued and helpful. Thus, they’ll perform better.
Healthy Communication
To bring everything together, there needs to be two-way communication. So many businesses have a separation between staff and management and that can create a lot of tension and disruptions. When communication is open information flows freely and everyone has a voice.
Of course, communication is not always easy. Good, healthy, and effective communication should have the following qualities:
- Be clear and unambiguous
- Maintain the same policies for everyone
- Establishes well-defined channels to communicate through
- Establish emergency procedures
- And should be done in writing and is accessible
All of this demands a communication system that can be easily established into two sections. One section for urgent matters and another for non-urgent matters.
Non-urgent matters should be done through freely accessible channels such as the ticketing system, an in-person or video meeting booked a few hours to a day in advanced, or through email. For urgent matters, meeting up face to face in an office, calling, or emailing with the subject URGENT on it are good methods.
By extension of this, having clear escalation procedures can also help smooth communication efforts too. Having distinct rules to make it clear to everyone ensures technicians can do their jobs without any issues. Some rules can be:
- Outlining parameters for tickets moving through statuses like “In Progress” and “Resolved”
- Listing out the amount of time that needs to elapse to escalate a ticket
- Have technicians include a last line that states either next steps, waiting for something, escalation is needed, or if the ticket has been resolved.
When Environments Are Collaborative and Clear, MSPs Grow
Making the workflow easier through company-wide standards as well as a strong and helpful environment can ensure employees being happy. Going to work knowing there is challenges but an easy-to-understand system can make ensure MSPs thrive in the process while keeping customers happy and satisfied.
About MSP Corp
MSP Corp understands you’ve worked hard to build your business and you want to protect it. With a mission to be a world-class business partner for MSP owners across Canada, we actively seek to acquire and partner with owners looking to secure the value of the business they have built and provide a seamless exit process that ensures business continuity and employee and client stability.
Contact us today to learn more about selling your business and maximizing its value.