Some mistakes cost a business more than others. For instance, forgetting to schedule a LinkedIn post for a holiday might come off as insensitive or disinterested, but 99% of customers won’t even realize it.
Not all small mistakes have such minor repercussions. For the business in today’s example, one minor mistake led to unrealized, ongoing damage to their reputation and finances.
For privacy reasons, we’ll call this company QuantixNode Solutions (which is entirely made up by ChatGPT and us). QuantixNode is a managed services provider (MSP) plagued by unresolved tickets, leading to dissatisfied clients, overburdened support staff, and a tarnished reputation—not to mention the financial impact of those. And despite their promises and genuine efforts to improve, the disappointments (and profit losses) continued.
QuantixNode, in its quest for improvement, turned to Resplendent Data to streamline its support operations. Together, they quickly identified the issue: a simple oversight… Not enforcing the presence of a due date on critical issue support tickets.
The consequences? Not so simple. Customer satisfaction dropped, and the company’s reputation was damaged, making it harder to acquire new business. Repairing the business’s reputation with existing and potential clients took time and effort, minimizing the company’s ability to grow.
All because of missing due dates.
The symptoms
These types of mistakes and oversights happen all the time in day-to-day operations and systems. While it’s often impossible (or highly impractical) to prevent 100% of them from happening, it’s critical to have systems in place that proactively identify and help resolve these issues.
So, how do you go from data visualization to finding a missing due date? It requires identifying the symptoms. Some of the symptoms below are specific to IT service providers. However, companies can apply these principles across many industries.
Operational symptoms
- Increased resolution time: Support tickets/issues linger without a target due date and resolution times increase.
- Poor prioritization: Critical issues get overlooked or delayed because less essential tasks take priority.
- Overwhelmed support staff: No clear deadlines leave support staff guessing which tickets to prioritize, leading to disorganization.
- Missed SLAs: Service level agreements get violated, leading to fallout with current and future clients.
Client-facing symptoms
Clients may end up left in the dark or without a response entirely about what is happening in these scenarios. Some common signs from the client side include:
- Frustration: When clients experience delays and uncertainty, they become frustrated and voice those concerns to you (if you’re lucky) and others through word of mouth, online review platforms, etc.
- Feeling invisible: Clients who are left in the dark or feel no transparency in the process feel like they don’t matter, leading them to look elsewhere for support. Or, at the very least, they become open to entertaining conversations with your competition when they come calling.
- Damaged trust: Missing expectations and poor communication erode the client’s trust in the business.
Business impact symptoms
The combination of displeased clients and inefficient operations leaves the company in a perilous position.
- Customer satisfaction decline: When clients become displeased, they often spread the word.
- Increased churn: Clients will look to competitors if they feel they need more support or develop low trust in the MSP.
- Reputation damage: As word spreads about consistent, unresolved issues, your business’s reputation will be hit, making winning and retaining customers harder.
- Revenue loss: All of the above result in lost revenue due to unsatisfied customers, reputation damage, and profit loss due to inefficient processes.
The resolutions
OK, so how do we deal with it? Locating and removing the parasite from your business can be done by looking for critical clues in your business operations. Here are a few data points to consistently monitor to identify the issue and remedy it:
- Number of unassigned tickets: This helps find where tickets are falling into a black hole and not getting resolved.
- Number of overdue tickets: This helps pinpoint what ticket type, customers, and techs are falling behind.
- Average ticket resolution time: By doing this, your company can identify critical issues exceeding average time.
- Number of open vs closed tickets over time: This can help visualize and correlate trends.
- Number of open critical tickets without due dates: This calls immediate attention to tickets that could go unattended.
- Support staff workload distribution: This will help identify bottlenecks.
At Resplendent, we make your data stand out. With entirely visual data presentation, customizable dashboards, and connected data streams, we help you identify, eliminate, and prevent profit parasites like these.
If you’re ready to see how magical data can be, schedule a demo to see how fully leveraging your data can launch your business forward.
