When it comes to providing successful and effective IT support, routine and process are essential. Creating a manageable daily routine means staying on top of your work and never falling behind. When the list of tasks to complete is never-ending, a consistent daily routine can help prioritise and manage tasks.
We’ve put together this list of daily tasks that help us stay on track to promote a positive work environment, facilitate effective communication and help manage the workload.
Daily Meetings
Since we offer 24/7 support, we have short daily meetings at the start and end of every shift. For standard daily hours, you should be having a morning meeting. These meetings will enable IT technicians to discuss issues, decide priorities, and improve collaboration.
We recommend making these meetings only last 10-15 minutes allowing people to get on with work without wasting time.
Official Handovers
While handovers are usually completed as needed, creating an official process or routine can help avoid miscommunication. If technicians pass on unfinished tickets, having proper documentation, reports and details of the handover help prevent things from falling through the cracks and preventing any blame later.
An official handover could simply be a signature acknowledging responsibility, a 2-minute conversation, an email or making a new leader on your internal management platform. Whatever works for you, make it official.
Client contact routine
While clients don’t often expect their IT support to be in touch every day unless there is an issue, we’ve found that factoring client contact into a daily routine is helpful. Allowing time every day to contact at least one client means that you can rotate who you stay in touch with.
Since clients don’t need daily contact, it becomes less of a priority, and then suddenly, it’s been two months since you spoke to a client. If client contact is part of your daily IT chores, you’ll never go too long without checking in.
Monitor Tickets
Sometimes, IT technicians get weighed down working on long-term projects. Unless a dedicated helpdesk, such as White Label IT, handles ticketing, minor issues and troubleshooting can be left unattended. All technicians should monitor and manage incoming tickets in their daily work routine.
This process should be simple and follow a procedure so tickets aren’t ignored or duplicated. An official ticketing system or platform can help regulate tickets and troubleshooting.
Verify Escalation Processes
IT technicians often jump on any new ticket that comes in. A ticket can slip through the cracks and be forgotten if it isn’t solved within a day. Carving time out of your day to review outstanding work is crucial to solving all issues.
Sometimes, this task can be a management task since they can delegate outstanding work to other technicians if needed. Nothing gets left behind by verifying the work tickets instead of just asking people if the work is done. Managers can also decide how to escalate a ticket or change how it is handled. Any unsolved ticket should be checked daily.
Backups, Notifications and Approvals
A very standard part of an IT technician’s daily routine involves running backups, checking platform and sensor notifications, and checking approvals for user permissions. Almost all platforms and devices should be backed up daily; some require backups every few hours.
Since continuous remote monitoring is a significant part of an IT support company’s workload, checking notifications and verifying automatic fixes should be performed daily. This will allow continuous improvement and management of automated processes.
Check Client Schedules, Timelines and Updates
Time can move quickly, and even though you may be aware of a big deadline in a couple of weeks, you should check timelines and schedules every day. Making sure projects are progressing on time helps prevent things from getting behind. Technicians should find time to double-check timelines every day.
This can help prioritise work and catch issues as early as possible so they can be addressed quickly and deadlines are met.
An overlooked element of timelines and schedules is checking for updates. Unless a program has an automatic update function, technicians should verify that everything is up to date.
Information Management and Inputting
Proper documentation, inputting data, and reporting is perhaps the most crucial part of any IT company. Technicians need details about the clients, billing, history, troubleshooting, previous fixes, integration systems, protocols and more.
Without accurate and up-to-date information, mistakes get made, which can end up costing the IT company its reputation and its clients a lot of money. Technicians should dedicate a large portion of their daily time to ensuring information is appropriately managed and stored.
Getting Your Daily IT Routine Sorted
Within the IT industry implementing routines and automated procedures and staying dedicated and consistent can be hugely helpful. While the daily tasks may vary from company to company, having a routine that works for you and your clients is beneficial in the long run.
Contact our team today for more information on creating daily, weekly and monthly IT routines or discussing how practices can help your IT support business.
