When your organization needs IT support, you want the experience to be consistently amazing.

As a managed service provider, our clients need us to act quickly and efficiently on critical IT issues to help keep their operations running. To fuel growth, they also want their organization to run smoothly.

Today, we’re talking about how the right support process provides consistent IT support, giving you the confidence to focus on your business goals rather than pesky IT problems.

IT issues happen

While your IT team works to prevent as many IT issues as possible, they are bound to happen at some point. Even with reliable technology with few problems, people often have questions about the software they’re using or may forget how to access a specific file.

All of this to say, IT support folks stay busy (working on tickets).

When you request IT support, there are a couple of different ways things can go. Here’s an example:

Scenario A: You submit a ticket requesting help with your PowerPoint presentation. The app froze, and with a client presentation in 30 minutes, ignoring the issue is not an option. However, you’re unsure when tech support will get to your issue and you may have to jump through a few people before finding the solution.

Or, Scenario B: You’re having the same issue discussed above, however you’re starting with someone whose only focus is making sure your ticket gets responded to and resolved quickly, your ticket is marked as urgent, and a tech calls you within ten minutes, giving you time to take a deep breath before walking into your client meeting.

Picking the preferred scenario seems like an easy choice, right?

Two ways to handle tickets, very different results

The process for handling tickets differs in each of the scenarios listed above.

In the first one, every tech scans through a list of tickets to decide what is important. A support team working like this may also answer the phone and work on issues as they are called in. While it may allow for good support experiences, more often than not, it creates inefficiencies that have a real impact as your business grows.  As IT supports the people and systems that drive revenue, inconsistent IT service affects the stability of your operations.

With a triage system, as described in scenario B, you can rest assured that your IT service team works quickly and efficiently through all tickets, regardless of priority. And consistently, so you can be assured that your employees and systems are working smoothly.

At WorkSmart, service coordinators triage your tickets as they come into our system.

 

What is a service coordinator?

Techs excel at solving IT issues and simplifying the use of technology. Service coordinators are highly organized people focused on the customer experience. They make sure you’re kept up-to-date on the progress of your ticket and that it is resolved promptly. By having someone else tracking and managing tickets, techs can focus on what they do best, and your business benefits from consistent outcomes.

Service coordinators review every request to determine the right next steps. They assess the impact to the business and severity of the issue and ensure techs address anything critical immediately

They also streamline the support process to make sure less impactful and severe issues are addressed quickly.

For example:

• Some issues aren’t technical in nature – the right people handle these, so it doesn’t distract the techs
• Some issues are reported by multiple people (and each person creates a ticket) – these get bundled, so the tech can get a complete picture of what’s happening
• Some issues are recurring – these get flagged so the tech can perform a root cause analysis.

Working Smart: Triaging Tickets for Consistent IT Support

Maintaining a well-defined process for evaluating tickets allows you to know what to expect in situations of need, leaves no room for confusion or delays as tickets enter our system. 

Especially as IT continues to be an important tool in business, every ticket deserves to be treated with urgency, even those small, annoying issues, such as a password reset or a quick “how-to”.

Efficiency is key, and we’re here to help you.

Click here for more information on our Managed IT Services.