Context
For MSPs today, not being available 24x7x365 significantly impacts the client satisfaction score and the ability to land quality clients. However, managing and hiring an after-hours team is a huge challenge and a big cost that can’t justify the ROI available.
Putting the business hours engineers on on-call rosters or keeping an answering service ends up increasing escalations, frustrated employees who work on escalations at odd hours, and operational costs for the company. Further, it doesn’t change much for customers, who must deal with a default-to-escalation mindset and wait for on-call engineers to resolve their issues.
Keeping a well-trained and intelligent after-hours team can be exorbitantly expensive for MSPs and the utilization of engineers also remains low, but it opens a lot of opportunities as more customers look for 24x7 MSPs. One of the largest MSPs in the USA based out of Florida, was facing the same challenges, and decided to work with us to manage their after-hours services.
Read a detailed break-down of how we helped a Florida-based MSP reduce their IT operations cost by 40% with Netoyed’s After Hours Program:
Challenges
The client had just acquired a new project that required a larger bandwidth of resources. This caused a strain on their existing engineers and managing after hours became a nightmare.
Few resources turned in their notice due to increased responsibilities and having to work in non-business hour shifts.
Hiring new engineers was
costing 40 %more than their existing resource budget.Their engineers were having trouble with documenting and resolving tickets from non-business hour shifts.
The escalation to on-call engineers was extremely high as most resources in after-hours shifts were junior engineers.
Our Solutions
We handpicked a team of 4 MSP System Engineers from our pool of MSP trained Engineers and cross trained them through a bootcamp of about 2 weeks on the client’s customers and systems. These Engineers were well versed on O365, System, and Network support, Server patching, maintenance, printer and other IT issues that CSPi’s customers were facing.
Customized 24x7x365 Service
CSPi had multiple engineers working during business hours, but they needed 2 dedicated engineers for their afterhours shift. We designed a customized roster for them with 2 dedicated seats available during an 8-hour shift on weekdays and 24x7 management on weekends and US holidays.
These are engineers who are trained in MSP tools such as ConnectWise, IT Glue, Sentry, Acronis, etc extensively to ensure they adapt quickly and are ready to take on client calls immediately. They’re given specialized training in ticket management, effective use of detailed note-taking templates and client servicing to ensure maximum first call resolution.
Additional Bandwidth:
Along with the customized package of 8-hour weekday shifts and 24x7 capability, we provided an add-on service of filling in for any shifts during business hours in case of emergencies. The service is provided by the same set of dedicated engineers that work during afterhours as they are well-equipped with internal teams and the clients.
As CSPi acquired a project that needed more resources in their on-call team than they had, we provided additional bandwidth to ensure there is ample support and continuity in business operations. This also helped them create a capability benchmark for recruitment in their internal teams.
Streamlined ticket management and customer servicing
When an escalation occurs, it's critical for on-call teams to get a detailed note of the issue. We set up an entire process for this with our customized templates for ticket management and detailed notetaking which has increased the overall of quality of tickets generated. Our teams follow this process to ensure a smooth handover to internal teams and on-call teams.
Along with custom templates, we built an entire knowledge base that can be used during client calls and ticket management to ensure minimum escalations and maximum first-call resolutions.
Interactive quizzes and assessments to reinforce learning
Internal on-call team for minimum escalations
The dedicated engineers are trained and provided with a comprehensive knowledge base to ensure immediate resolutions. But in case a ticket is created, we have an internal on-call team with senior engineers and solution architects to resolve the issue. This ensured that there are minimum or 0 escalations to CSPi’s internal on-call teams. With this process, we took down the afterhours escalation rate from 78% to 0% in six months.
SLA-backed month-on-month service:
Month-on-Month payments with a 30-day exit clause
Contract of 1 year with 1-month free trial
Netoyed Edge
100% trained, ready-to-go engineers with varied experience in network, cyber, and systems operations and support.
A completely automated and hygienic process of ticketing and note-taking protocols spread across on-call and support teams for higher efficiency.
A global workforce that ensures support for after-hours, weekends and holidays is managed efficiently.
The Result
Working as an extension of the CSPi team rather than an outsourced department, the Netoyed team managed to create a consistent process of ticket management as well as internal handovers. There was a surplus of resources at all times to ensure there was no gap in client servicing and ticket management.
We created a solid afterhours management process, backed with a well-trained ready-to-go workforce to help CSPi become a true 24x7 MSP. This in return reduced their cost of opportunities, cost of on-call engineers and allowances, less downtime, effective ticket management, and an overall increased client satisfaction score.
Engineers delivered an average of 80.4% efficiency on ticket resolution
Their NPS Score increased by 30% to 63 in 6 months
The collated ROI increased by 137% in 6 months
92% Tickets in non-business hours were resolved in the first call
The escalation to on-call teams decreased to 0% within 6 months
Tickets and alert allocation increased by 100% within 6 months
100% of the patching and upgrades were handled by the Netoyed team
