Step 3
The third step is to incentivize the proper behavior. We defined the proper behaviors in the second step. Now use those definitions to reward employees for the right behaviors. If you have been around long enough in this business, you probably remember yourself or another provider offering technicians rewards for highest billable hours, getting a client to agree to some new project, or getting a new customer from a referral. Some of you may still have some of those in place.
In this age of managed services where efficiency is king, we must develop new incentives to drive behaviors that benefit the business in ways that align to this new business model. Just like commissions for salespeople, incentives for technicians can either drive the right behaviors or the wrong ones. Make sure your incentive plan drives the right behaviors and eliminates as many loopholes as you can.
Chances are you will have to adjust over time as employees find ways to gain the system. A word of advice: never make an employee pay for your mistake in a compensation or incentive plan. Pay it out and then change the plan so it can’t happen again.
Final thoughts
As many of you switch from manual documentation to a tool, there is a significant amount of work to get your old documentation into the new system. The better you incentivize this the quicker it will get done and the quicker you will start leveraging the benefits of having secure but easy-to-access documentation.
As more IT service providers are targeted for their access to multiple client systems, the more important it becomes to properly manage that data and access. Make sure you have the right level of security on your documentation and that everyone who needs access to it can get it as efficiently as possible.
The quickest way to get to your goal and keep that documentation up-to-date is to incentivize your people to do it properly. Incentive plans can be tricky but when well conceived and maintained, they bring more than their face value back to the business in terms of ROI.
Eric Anthony is principal of customer experience at SolarWinds MSP. Before joining SolarWinds, Eric ran his own managed services provider business for over six years.
You can follow Eric on Twitter at @EricAnthonyMSP
