IT phone home

Last time, we suggested some good habits to instill within your team, and today we’ll discuss one more—keeping your techs in constant communication with your home office.

Good advice from E.T.

Priorities can quickly change. This means techs need to be agile, and ready to shift their course at the drop of a hat. But, they can’t do that if they’re not made aware of those changes. For this reason, we suggest getting techs in the habit of pulling an E.T. and phoning home at the close of each customer visit.

That luminous-limbed alien followed some solid life advice. When you’re lost, not sure what to do next, or curious as to where you should go next, phone home.

Many factors can alter a schedule from hour to hour, so when dispatchers keep technicians in the loop, everyone is on the same page and can more effectively service customers and appropriately utilize time.

By taking a page from E.T.’s playbook, you empower your techs with the knowledge they need to change course midstream—a necessity when a customer has an emergency.

For instance, at 8 in the morning, your tech’s biggest priority might simply be mapping a new client’s data center. But by 8:10, their new top priority might be getting a customer back up and running after a new patch crashes their systems. You work in a constantly changing landscape and it’s never too late to put best practices in place and adapt to it.

Automation to the rescue

While constantly calling in to the home office might seem gratuitous, this one quick act could add up to several billable hours by the end of the month. When techs are done with an appointment, they might be in the vicinity of another customer who needs assistance, so it saves travel time back to the office.

This technique works very well with a mobile business automation solution, like ConnectWise Manage®, as techs can easily look up relevant information for the next job without ever having to travel back to the office.

It’s nice and tidy. Techs have real-time access to priorities, and you can see which tickets they’ve worked. Everyone gets the visibility they need to manage shifting priorities, so big customer issues don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Be on the lookout for the conclusion to this series. In our final installment, we’ll explain how giving techs the freedom to innovate can help you accrue more billable hours.