Simple Steps to Improving Your Service Delivery

Ask anyone successful in the IT service management business and they’ll tell you.

It’s not enough to focus solely on the implementation, system details and management of your client’s technology. What will best drive growth is building solid relationships with customers based on the quality of your service.

Sounds simple, right? And it can be, with a commitment to a few key business processes that will help improve your service delivery management.

Communicate. A lot.

You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating. You cannot over-communicate to your clients; they feel more comfortable when they know what’s going on. Eliminate gaps in information and increase accountability by emailing all updates from the service ticket through the Closed Loop feature in ConnectWise Manage.

Document. Everything.

Even when a quick phone call seems the most efficient way to update a status, take time to document the conversation with a back-up ‘here’s what we discussed’ email through Closed Loop. It provides clarity for all parties and a valuable record of ticket history.

Dispatch. All the time.

Dispatch resources without delay to promote and increase customer satisfaction, utilization, billable time and SLA compliance.

Define. Then automate.

Onboarding and offboarding are processes that can be carefully defined and then broken into consistent steps to be automated where possible. An effective new client ‘welcome’—from site audit to user training—ensures customers are set up with proper services and that all expectations for support are accurate.

When, for whatever reason, a client requests to terminate services, an equally detailed outline for offboarding should kick into gear, including preparation of turnover documents and an onsite exit meeting.

Measure. It’s a must.

You’ll never know how you’re doing if, well, you don’t know how you’re doing. To understand current and future resource needs, it’s essential to have processes in place for measuring your employee capacity and schedule in accordance with commitments in contracts, budgeted projects, and sale forecasts.

Know when indirect is best.

As important as client contact is, routing it correctly is even more essential for efficiency and accountability. Rather than customers contacting service teams directly, always guide requests to the help desk, so they can be processed on a service ticket.

Channel your clients.

Create well-defined and easy-to-follow contact channels between your customers and service delivery teams to control processes and account accurately for time.

While these basic guidelines may at the surface seem intuitive, you have to be consistent about implementing them in order to find success.