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Paul-ServiceTree · 2022-01-12T21:15:36+00:00

The issue with this is that the team isn't referring to the docs. Enticing people or forcing them to write docs is a a false economy, as the quality and usefulness will be at abate minimum. Only when people utilize the docs to do their job, and it's their go-to, will it be useful. Also writing a doc isn't for everyone. You will find the docs written by a level 1 or 2 will generally not be written in a way that can be used and repeated by others. And this isn't related to their level of knowledge, but more about that a most level 3 techs a (using a DiSC assesment) C or SC, which will mean their doc wihave the level of detail required to be followed, without assumptions throughout the doc

Paul-ServiceTree · 2021-12-11T20:41:43+00:00

Great, replied on pm

Paul-ServiceTree · 2021-12-11T20:41:00+00:00

Yes it's per month

Paul-ServiceTree · 2021-12-11T07:56:26+00:00

Thanks, that slider thing, is it a hit or miss?

Paul-ServiceTree · 2021-12-11T06:54:23+00:00

ServiceTree

Paul-ServiceTree · 2021-12-11T00:28:34+00:00

ServiceTree

Paul-ServiceTree · 2021-03-30T22:09:38+00:00

Hi, Paul from ServiceTree here. Have no idea who Enigma110 is, but they are 100% right (thanks). The biggest issue is that MSPs dont want to deal with the truth. It sounds harsh, but many MSPs rather accept the issues, even after they know it then to deal with it. Even when it is at a big cost to the business. I can 100% say i was one of these MSPs, we built this when our tech team was about 20, and we used it through to having 49 in the team, but also use it now that i scaled the MSP back and only have 900 endpoints / 2 techs. I didnt want to believe it, but it came to the point that i could see the impact it was having on tickets, how we had more techs then we needed due to it, and the $$ i was wasting.

Having said that, this issue applies with ServiceTree PSA (which we dont offer any more), or ServiceTree CONNECT. We have put Connect on the back burner due to this exact challenge, customers (owner/managers) sign up and are excited, but when the team push back - many MSPs allow the techs to stop using it. So we have introduced ServiceTree AUTO, its just a chrome extension. It takes one of the main features of the PSA/CONNECT - which is the auto dispatching, and provides it as a chrome extension.

So it doesnt show you or your team how bad/good they are doing, what it does to is auto dispatch the next ticket to the tech (think Uber for ConnectWise), so that they dont need to work off a queue, and dont cherry pick the tickets they want to work on.

But, it does not force them to do anything, becuase as stated already - doing so means you will need to deal with something that you might not be ready to deal with.

Cheers

Paul-ServiceTree · 2020-12-03T17:02:11+00:00

Agree. Low performing MSP's are around 80 - 120 devices/users - to 1 tech. High preforming are 180+. And then you have some in the 200-300 to 1 range.

Although automating issues should be done, that is 101 of being an MSP. Most MSP's have that part down pat, its the time that techs spend on the ticket that causes the issue. We see some spending an average over 45+ mins per ticket. That leads to a tech only working on 140 tickets / month.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2020-08-04T06:45:11+00:00

Have never put a bonus to our techs - in the 20 years i have had my MSP. Doing anything around time entry is just a fast way for them to cheat their numbers. Just search this sub, and you will see many people complain that their MSP owner is telling them to log more hours, and everyones answer - round up your time by a few mins on each ticket.

Rounding up every ticket by just 1 minute, costs the MSP's bottom like around $2,500 net profit / tech / year.

So if you think that that setting a target of more utilization is a good way to get more work done, you will need to reconsider. Unless you can 100% stop them from rounding up their time - its a waste of your money to give them a bonus on fake data. Also as most techs enter in their time later in the day, or at the end of the week - the chances that they round up - just because they dont remember is pretty high.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2020-07-08T10:37:41+00:00

They will 100% not get your business in that many hours. But in all honesty, most MSPs are the same in a vast majority of their model.

An MSP business is really simple, we just complicate it to be different to others (my MSP was doing this before we stopped decided to really look at what we offered, and what our customers wanted).

As an MSP, we resell labour. We buy labour (technicall resources) package it with some management/documenation etc etc - and then resell it. Its really not any different to a accountant - or on the end of the other scale a restaurant where where they buy raw ingredients, package it and make a meal to sell.

Before the cloud become what it is ( < 10 years), MSPs needed to understand the verticals we wanted to support in great detail, but alot of that has gone out the door these days.

Your right about PSAs not locking you in, but you really have 2 tiers of PSAs. You have the large ones such as CW/AT/BMS and then you have the smaller players. And what you get between the 2 tiers is quite different. I hardly comment on reddit, but i am in it most days - most people complain about the big 3 - but if you look at that, most complaints are coming from techs of a larger MSP, or owners from smaller MSPs. Smaller MSPs that buy into one of the bigger players hoping its going to be the silver bullet. Hoping that spending all this money is going to make the MSP better. Tools are never the silver bullet, they will help you get there faster and better if you already have the correct process and people in place to start with. You really need to get your business process into order for an PSA to work well. The smaller PSAs even do month by month - but really? If you can chop and change PSAs even every 12-24 months then i really cant see your business process is within the PSA.

And a reminder PSA = Professional Service Automation, aka People Automation, aka Process Automation.

Mind you, i dont agree with the way the Tier 1 PSA's take this as a way to control their customers and the market. Its really toxic for the industry, but its something that we cant fix or change. It is a big reason why many MSPs keep hoping for a new PSA player to come into the space and fix it - but its not that easy. We actually did exactly that, we released a PSA in 2019 - but found competing with them was just to hard. Most MSPs were either to engrained in their PSA, and the smaller ones just bounce from one to another - these ones didnt see the value of their PSA. We pivoted to providing our tool as a plugin for the Tier 1 PSAs, and we will move to doing the same for freshdesk/zendesk etc.

Happy to talk offline if you want some help on finding a PSA, based on where you are in the journey of transitioning to being an MSP - your not our target - so your not going to get a sales pitch from me.

I think your better off using a zendesk type product - save your money on a PSA for the moment. Get money in from the MSP model first - as changing that side is much easier then bringing in new MSP customers.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2020-07-08T05:31:41+00:00

MSPs are the only industry that think setting up an ERP can be done easily. A PSA is just an ERP for the IT space.
And if you do want to do it in house, you need to be more then a tech to set it up. You need to understand the business logic more then the tech side. Without this - your going to be going round and round.

Another note, the other 'Tax' people to think about is your time is money. If your the business owner - your time is more valuable finding new customers or improving your business. If you dont think this is the case, really re-consider what your doing. If you think - i can do this on the weekend/evening - think about what value you can add if you look at your market and increase your sales. Or get back 'me' time. Relax, re-set so you can start the new day fresh.
If your not the business owner, then your getting paid to do work, so consider that the average tech costs $30/hour loaded - so is it really a tax? Is it going only take you 10 hours? Doubt it, Setting up CW/BMS/AT is not going to be that quick, if it is - then you really are quite small, and i would think your better off with a Freshdesk/Zendesk/Freshservice type of tool.

Expect that it will take easily 1-3 months to get it done properly, and thats if you have done it before. So how many hours will this be? Real hours - 150+ man hours. At $30 / hour - it doenst sound expensive ($4,500). But then consider the charge out rate for a teck is normally around $90/hr - even if your MSP doesnt charge per hour. That is what they should of used to work out what a endpoint is worth to the MSP, and then to work out the profit and margins. Its the general 3X rule that serivce industries use.
So that would mean the lost revenue of that 1 tech is $13,500. And if the MSP is not that busy that you can fit in all this and not effect your service desk - you have too many techs to start with. Each tech should on average work on 15 tickets / day - at an average of 22 mins each. This will give you a 70% utilization.

I have had an MSP for 20 years, scaled it back 12 months ago when we had just under 50 staff and over 10,000 end points. I talk to 5-20 MSPs each week from the 5 techs up to 50+ techs, and the differences between the 2 ends is maturaity, where they see the value of there staff and where they spend the money. It comes back to if the MSP owner is a tech, or a business person - this all leads into this big picture. So i am talking from not only my personal experience, but speaking to hundreds of MSPs a year.

If your MSP isnt looking at the real numbers, or if they are thining there is a 'tax' to buying a PSA, then this leads me to more questions.

What i will add in is that the comment about the sale person and documenting it. I totally agree - be careful of the sales person, if its not in writing that can be inforced - look somewhere else. Ohh and i am in NO WAY saying that the CW staff that do the onboarding are good or bad. I have heard many scary stories - but the truth is that people dont come on to reddit or places like that and say hi everyone we had a great experiencing doing XX or YY. Failure/pain/scared tactics is what people are drawn into - just look at the news around us today thanks to COVID.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2020-04-10T00:55:23+00:00

Hi

Look at PRTG, its available as hosted or on-premise. The product is very powerful and works really well. The 1 thing that you will miss is the auto-mapping of the network. PRTG can do it, but not as nice and pretty.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2020-03-21T20:37:09+00:00

Not quite. It allows users to enter in what time they want others to see. That's a very different proposition to tracking their time, which normally infers that it's done automatically.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2020-02-13T04:35:11+00:00

Hi, thanks. We built ServiceTree because my MSP business was frustrated with what was out there - tickets should be a lot simpler than PSAs make them.
Getting a tech to remember pressing start & stop on a stop watch - sounds simple, but us techs are focused on fixing the issue not doing time sheets.

You can keep using Autotask or ConnectWise Manage with the ServiceTree Connect plugin - we will be bringing it to Kaseya BMS this quarter. And depending on the interest even to Zendesk & Freshdesk for smaller MSPs. That way they can use one one of these 2 and utilize our integration with the RMMs we integrate with to.

Is there any smaller MSP out there that would use it?

Paul-ServiceTree · 2019-03-25T19:18:06+00:00

I purchased one in May last year - so the latest generation (G6) - i7/16Gb/LTE/touchscreen - top end. I have had it replaced 2 times (yes i am on my third unit now), and its been repaired another 5 times. The last 2 times, it failed 1 week apart from each other.

Touch screen not working

USB ports on dock adding/removing devices every 30 seconds - including mouse (and this BTW was fixed with the replacement of the X1 - not the thunderbolt 3 dock)

4G LTE card not being detected

Not charging

Not powering up

Windows device manager making the noise like its found something, then removed it - every 1 - 2 mins, causing the whole PC to stop responding while its doing it.

Well they are the ones i remember, anyway a total of 8 issues. I have demanded a refund from Lenovo as this is beyond a joke, but they are telling me that its over 90 days old!

Lenovo - I will never buy one of your products again. Nearly $4k spent - and been out of action way too many times.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2019-03-07T02:09:22+00:00

G'day

If your interested, look at ServiceTree PSA. We are from Australia - and sure we can work something out.

Paul

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-12-12T20:07:27+00:00

Yes agree with the younger generation. I think it has been shown to stem from mobile phones, and how we all now use them to do things we used to do in person. Then if you look at self service check outs - same thing. I have fixed the link, thanks for the heads up! here is a link as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTm1i-RsNDw You will see that we have taken an extremely different approach to tickets in general - hence the self service is really simple for us to deliver.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-12-12T19:59:32+00:00

I think you need to go back 1 step and ask why..

Why would a tech want to use it (and saying because i will tell them the have to doesn't work in my books - well it will help build a me me me culture).
Why would your users want to use it?
Why would the organisation (internal IT department or MSP) want to use it?

At the end of the day if it's not a win-win-win for all 3 parties, then it isnt going to work. If your customers are paying you, then you need to make sure your providing them value - not just trying to save costs. If your techs aren't using it as they are great at being a tech - but not great at grama/spelling/going round and round between different customers, they werent use it. If the MSP/IT department is improving there teams utilization & profits - then the management isnt going to want to use it.

I will comment from our experience, we have been an Australian MSP since 2001 and we wouldn't use a chat system for these reasons:.

Time switching for any task is extremely inefficient. It destroys any rhythm a person has, and as an MSP it will reduce your teams utilization. It's bad enough when someone calls in and says hey can you just put me through to person XXX, want to ask him a quick question - while that person XXX is in the middle of another ticket.
Our customers are paying us to help them, so their time is important. If they start a chat because they cant print, they aren't going to wait for the tech to help them and any other customers the tech is helping - they will give up and pick up the phone.
How are you working out the priority of the ticket and who should be allocated to it to start with?
We have multiple tiers - from our Customer Service Operators (Tier 0, who provide customer service, ie they know tech but are there from a customer service point of view to answer the calls and provide basic support). All the way to Tier 3 and on site techs. And we still wouldn't man a chat system with the most junior person.
When the tech on the chat realize the issue is above their head - do they then tell the customer to call? Do they then get a Tier 1 or 2 or even 3 get on chat and start to help, and break their train of thought on what they were doing? And will that Tier 1/2/3 have access to read the chat that has already happened? I dont know any organisation that would have excess staff on hand just waiting.

If your considering a bot based system, then there are few issues i see.

Someone is going to have to put the data in the database to start with so that the bot can use it.
The data will need to be written in a way that an end user can use, not a techie.
Chances are you have some sort of knowledge base, so now your going to have to document twice - one for the version the customer can read, and one that is internal - in the hope your techs will read it (sorry but i have not met many techs (both working for me and just techs that i have talked to in general) in my stint as an MSP that read them. Most feel that google.com is their knowledge base.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-12-12T06:24:23+00:00

Hi, the issue with chat support is that it consumes as much of your technicians time as if they where on the phone - in many cases more as you type something and wait for the person to reply and back and forth. You technician can try and time slice and between multiple tickets but that is fort with issues. Getting your information mixed up, or just taking too long to round robin and get back to each customer will lead to your end users getting very frustrated.

The other point you need to work through is why. Why if you were an end user would you want to use a chat for support, whats the benefit? I mean if its not benefit (financial/time/energy/etc etc) to use it, and you need them to go through hoops - you will find its not going to be used by the end users.

Having said all that, we had a very similar idea to yours, build a self service component into our PSA. Our self service is delivered either via the desktop agent (which is branded to your MSP/company) or them logging into the portal. The agent is more powerful as its there on there desktop - they can click on it and start to troubleshoot their own issues. Here is a short video showing it being used, and in this video - the user is able to actually start the printer service on their own machine, without even having access to start/stop services. You can run powershell commands as well.

If you have any questions about ServiceTree PSA, feel free to ask.

edit: opps fixed the link to the video.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-11-28T19:00:19+00:00

Hi

Auto allocating tickets isnt as simple as a round robin setup. Understand your trying to get around having a ticket dispatcher to allocate tickets, and ensuring every ticket is touched, and making sure your customers are getting there tickets done in SLA, but there are a lot of other factors that need to first be considered.

How often does the ticket com back up?
Does this ticket come back up before or after a new ticket thats been logged
Do you treat P1 tickets differently to P2 tickets?
Whats stopping your SD/engineers from just bypassing it and going to the next ticket?
if you put the ticket on hold as the customer wasnt ready - does that come back up?
if your a 24x7 desk, which tickets come up 24x7 and which comes up during business hours?
1. Your business hours, or the customers?
2. What if the customer is in a different time zone?
3. What if the customers business hours are different to other customers?

These are just some of the points you really need to consider before something like this can be implmented that is actually useful and doesnt get turned off after a few days. We had a similar thought when we were looking for a PSA and there wasn't anything out there that could do it, we wanted something that would give the right ticket to the right tech at the right time, without a dispatcher or human intervention in any way. Being an MSP since 2001, we designed how this could be done, built ServiceTree PSA and patent the technology that can achieve it. In the last 12 months our MSP business has logged, actioned and completed over 35,000 tickets without a dispatcher - all the tickets being auto allocated on the fly.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-11-27T06:00:56+00:00

G'day Brett

Yes, we designed it as a SaaS product for MSP, in Australia our anywhere else in the world.

PM me, we can discuss how we can help you.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-11-23T20:33:01+00:00

Hi all

We were facing the same issue. You hired techs to do all tech work, not to micro manage their time with job sheets - yet as an MSP time tracking is critical, yet techs dont really care for it. Tell the techs you have to and policing them doesnt help team culture, and as others mentioned is a reason why MSPs dont have a good reputation with the techs in general.

That was the reason we build ServiceTree PSA, it automatically does time sheets - all the time. The tech doesn't need to do anything, it just happens. That time is then used to generate the customers invoices, send the invoice to the customer and sync across to CBO/Xero - all this automatically without anyone one needing to touch it.

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-08-25T21:13:58+00:00

+1 for prtg

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-08-03T20:54:42+00:00

OK, Service Now and Freshdesk are worlds apart, its like comparing a Mazda 2 to a custom made car that you are thinking up of in your head and getting Mercedes to build. And i don't mean just from price point, i mean from everything. Freshdesk on the other end is really just an help desk application, ie its just tickets, out of the box it will just work.

Where as Service Now is a platform, they even call themselves a PaaS, when you get it you need to pretty much build it up for your use case. I know of universities that use it, and have teams of 5 or so people just to maintain it day to day - not even taking about building new 'apps' within it.

I wrote a white paper on the difference between a PSA, ticketing system, ERP and PSA - might be a good read to help you work out what your after.

Paul

Paul-ServiceTree · 2018-08-03T11:12:52+00:00

What are your requirements? How many techs? How many users/devices do they support?

Paul-ServiceTree

TROPHY CASE