It’s no secret that we’re experiencing a labor shortage and we know how deeply these shortages impact our MSP helpdesk clients’ profitability. From operating with a skeleton crew to turning to temporary workers, freelancers, independent contractors, and other personnel beyond their core team to fill crucial roles, it’s challenging to keep operations on track and profitable. What your clients need now (and what MSP helpdesks are uniquely equipped to facilitate) is agility. Clients and MSP helpdesks must respond strategically and flexibly amid fluctuating markets, supply chains, employee turnover, and the many challenges in today’s business environment. At TimeZest, we believe that efficiency is the key to agility and profitability, and a critical component to off-setting the pressure caused by a labor shortage, not just for your clients, but for your MSP helpdesk, too.
Here’s how getting lean and mean can help you face the challenges of tomorrow – and how we’re here to help.
How Automated Scheduling Can Help You Drive Efficiency (and Profitability) Amid A Labor Shortage
1. Leverage The Team You Already Have
Employee burnout is a leading cause of turnover and the statistics on helpdesk burnout are harrowing with over 65% of helpdesk teams reporting excessive stress and burnout. Replacing valuable talent comes at a significant cost, particularly as they take their knowledge with them. Having to onboard and train a new employee has a high cost in terms of time investment, project delays, and missed deadlines – in fact, the median cost of turnover is more than 20% of that employee’s salary.
As MSP-industry veterans, this is one of the areas we focused on when we specifically designed TimeZest for MSPs. The fact is – you didn’t hire your talented team to handle scheduling – a frustrating and relentless ping pong that eats up weeks of valuable time and profitability every year. By scheduling a support appointment as part of your normal workflow, within your PSA, and during the ticketing process, we’re creating efficiency that allows your techs and dispatchers to focus on their high-value, rewarding work.
2. Provide a White Glove Client Service Experience
No MSP helpdesk wants to be missing SLAs because of support scheduling. The problem with scheduling, rescheduling (40% of 1-1 meetings are rescheduled!), and canceling support appointments manually is that, even though the client may be causing the delays (or no-showing to the appointment) their overall perception of their support experience suffers. One of our favorite pieces of feedback we’ve received from our community of 1000+ MSPs is that, after implementing TimeZest, their clients reported perceiving the helpdesk to be less busy and overwhelmed, although the task load had not changed.
TimeZest works across industry-leading PSAs and calendar solutions so that even if you, your client, and your team are using different platforms, you can still secure the optimal time and optimal team to resolve the client’s problem quickly and efficiently.
3. Communicate Where Your Clients Are Already Communicating
While picking up the phone feels like an added personal touch, it’s an efficiency and profitability-killer when it comes to client support scheduling. Eliminating outdated communication methods is critical as you position your MSP helpdesk to create more agility for yourself and your clients.
TimeZest’s revolutionary automated scheduling is embedded into the ticketing process, and integrated into your PSA workflow, eliminating the need for a phone or email conversation to schedule, reschedule, or cancel. Once the ticket is created, your client, dispatchers, and techs are all aware of the support appointment and can see it on their calendars. And, we’ve optimized TimeZest to work within your client’s existing communication preferences, such as Microsoft Teams, eliminating any need to call or email to check in on the status of a ticket.
4. Get Strategic On Staffing
The devil is in the details when it comes to efficiency, so having the ability to quickly and strategically assign the right tech to a job is critical. For example, if you have an underutilized tech and another who is about to start billing overtime, assigning the wrong tech to the job can come at a real cost. Unnecessary overtime is especially costly when considering that many of the tech’s hours have been wasted on nonproductive work like scheduling and rescheduling.
We designed TimeZest to be customizable to your staffing needs, giving you the flexibility to determine the best way of automatically selecting a tech, whether that’s a “round robin” strategy to assigning techs, assigning the tech with optimal availability match with your clients, and so much more.
We Can Help You Weather This Storm
Amidst a labor shortage, your clients need you more than ever, and you need to remain lean and mean to meet their needs and stay profitable. We’re proud to have created an industry-leading scheduling automation tool designed to put you in control of your calendar, reduce time and talent waste, and nurture an environment of efficiency and success. To learn more about our seamless PSA integration and how you can harness the power of TimeZest to optimize your MSP helpdesk, start your 14-day free trial today.
