If you promise your clients 24-hour support but fail to deliver on that promise, you might want to rethink the way your techs respond to ticket requests.
This means that as a managed service provider (MSP), you’ll want to rework the way you manage your after hours support. From emergency rotation, to strategies for coping with an emergency, this article will outline some key strategies for delivering the service your customers deserve.
With that, here are some critical steps you can take to become more responsive after hours:
1. Ask clients to call in the event of an emergency
Don’t have a policy of asking clients to call when they need you? Now might be the time to develop one. This is because MSPs only rarely have someone monitoring the support board around the clock—making techs unresponsive to after hours requests in many cases. But this doesn’t have to be you.
To make sure your clients can reach you, you might issue an automated response to your customers’ automated ticket requests. Let them know they can call you if their issue is time-sensitive, and provide a phone number to which your techs are more likely to respond.
2. Link your voicemail system to your email connector
When it comes to delivering cutting-edge after hours support, this too is critical. If your MSP has a voicemail system, you’ll want to make sure it’s well-integrated with your email connector—that way you’ll automatically generate tickets with each voicemail no matter where you are in your rotation.
In other words, if a technician misses a phone call that comes in, they’ll still receive a ticket in their system. Then, you can adjust your workflow based on that, notifying the on-call manager if needed.
(Another key point: For accountability reasons, you’ll want to make certain you have an on-call manager overseeing your technicians.)
3. Put some metrics around how many calls techs miss after hours
By identifying how many calls your support technicians tend to miss after hours—and how many of them are actual emergencies—you can deepen your understanding of what you need to change. This will give you all the insights you need to elevate your CSAT score too.
Additionally, you can take this time to analyze how many after hours support ticket requests are actual emergencies. If the majority of your tickets are in fact non-urgent, your techs can make a note to follow up with the customer in the morning (on business days), or on Monday (in response to weekend requests).
Did you know that some ticket templates can be leveraged to handle your on-call technician and their rotation schedule? By setting up a ticket template, you can generate recurring tickets and build your rotation directly in the support queue.
You can sync this template with your technicians’ calendars, displaying each person’s schedule directly in the dispatch portal for better visibility. This will ensure techs know exactly when they’re on call—helping them become more responsive as a result.
5. Make sure your techs pay close attention to their time entries
Often, after hours support isn’t covered in a managed services agreement. Though there are some exceptions—for instance, with VIP clients or actual emergencies depending on the customer’s contract—techs will need to evaluate whether the request at hand is billable.
This makes it all the more essential for your support technicians to enter their time into your MSP software and use the appropriate after hours work-type designations when they do so. You’ll maximize your revenue by leveraging your invoicing queue in this way.
