Karl's SMB Email July 4th!

Nothing Happens by Itself

What

Greetings!

Happy Independence Day in the U.S. When I was a kid, I heard this joke.

"Do they have 4th of July in England?"

"No, of course not."

"Yes they do - They just don't celebrate it."

I didn't say it was funny. But to a ten year old, it's amusing.

Anyway: I hope you are able to take the day off and celebrate with family, BBQ, and maybe a beer.

-- -- --

We have GREAT course starting tomorrow: Managing Your Service Board. This is a very popular five-week course and will not be offered again this year or next year. So if you want the live version, sign up today!

See info below or at ITSPU.com.

-- -- --

The downside of AI . . . coming soon to your web site?

I've enjoyed some humorous interactions with the artificial intelligence customer service at Libsyn, the company that broadcasts our podcasts out to the pod catchers. Libsyn's CS AI reads emails and automatically creates a ticket.

Cool. Then it looks at the keywords, points you to one of their knowledgebase articles, and closes the ticket. If you reply with, "Do not close this ticket - you haven't solved the problem," the AI reads the whole message, finds the keywords, sends you a knowledgebase article, and closes the ticket.

... Looks like we're getting closer to that mythical perpetual motion machine.

But seriously, this gets to one of the key questions you need to ask about customer service: Does this automation serve you or the client? And please remember, there has to be some way to contact a human if your automation fails.

-- -- --

And on the NSITSP news front . . .

The election season is about to kick off!

I created this blog post over on the NSITSP web site with lots more details. But here are the two big things you need to know:

July is all about promoting the elections. Actually signing up to run starts August first.
We're holding a big Election Kickoff meeting July 13th. See the link at the top of the NSITSP web site or go here to register for the Zoom meeting.

I've also got a blog post on the first year "report card" for the society. See the links below.

-- -- --

That's it for this short holiday week.

PLEASE take a minute and look at the next big 5-week course on Managing Your Service Board. Join us!

Have a great week.

- Karl P.

:-)

Starts Next Week:

Managing Your Service Board

Class starts July 5th - Register now!

Managing Your Service Board

- Setup, Core SOPs, and Daily Procedures

You’re guaranteed to learn something that will make or save you the price of admission!

Taught By: Karl Palachuk, author and coach

- Five Tuesdays - July 5th - August 2nd

- All classes start a 9:00 AM Pacific

This course covers the most important pieces of making your PSA (Professional Services Administration) service board work effectively. Your PSA is the brain center of your entire operation.

Most Managed Service Providers don't use their PSA systems efficiently. In fact, most of them only use 10-20% of the capabilities of their PSA. This costs you money because you have the tool to run everything in your business more effectively. But if you don't put the right information into the tool, then you can't get the reports you need to improve your business.

This course covers the daily operation of a managed service business - or any IT shop with a service board and one or more technicians who execute the service. It assumes you have a service board or PSA (Professional Services Administration) and a service manager.

Whether you sell “break fix” or flat fee services, a service board will take your company to the next level – if you use it right. In addition to covering setup and core standard operating procedures, we'll get into the "nitty gritty" of running a service board and managing the service department.

Which PSA? (It mostly doesn't matter, but . . .)

I used ConnectWise for four years in my business. Then I switched to Autotask and used that for five years. Eventually, I move to SolarWinds and used that for more than five years.

On top of all that, I've worked closely with coaching client who have used all of these products. This course is intended to apply to all PSAs. I will point out areas where differences are most obvious.

You will learn:

How tickets should flow into, through, and off of the service board
How to set up the core components of a service board
Priorities
Statuses
Workflows
Time Estimates
The most important processes and procedures for making the board work effectively once it's set up
Introducing new processes to you employees
Getting clients to understand the new processes
Time tracking the right way
The most important reports you need to run
Every Day
Every Week
Every Month
When it's time for client renewals
Avoiding the biggest pitfalls with service board management
Building an Action Plan that works
and MORE!

ITSP University Certification:

Meets Certification Requirements for:

Management
Technician
Service Manager

This class will be recorded. Each unit is generally posted within 24 hours of the live class. These recorded units will become the On-Demand class and you’ll have lifetime access to it.

Class Content

Unit 1 Core Components / Building Blocks of a Great Service Board

Unit 2 Core Processes and Procedures for Success / Time Tracking the Right Way

Unit 3 Implementation and Daily Processes

Unit 4 A Day in the Life of the Service Desk / Policies that Drive Profitability

Unit 5 Build and Maintain a Well-Oiled Machine / Getting the Details Right

Delivered by Karl Palachuk, author of Managed Services in a Month and many other books for MSPs – managed service providers.

Note: * Members of the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community attend at no additional charge. See details in the Community

All the Resources That Are Fit to Print

Recent Blog Posts, Podcasts, and Videos

Small Biz Thoughts Blog:

SMB Community Podcast - New episodes drop every Thursday

The Killing IT Podcast - New episodes drop every Tuesday

National Society of IT Service Providers News Blog

Relax Focus Succeed:

Selected Recent Videos and Webinars:

Managing Your Service Board - Class Info
One to share with prospects: Why Companies Outsource IT Services
SBT Community News for July
RFS: No One's Paying - and That's Okay
SOP: Clarity - Asking and Receiving

Our YouTube tech channel is now reaching 19,000 views per month. Subscribe today and don't miss a thing!

A quick guide to my Playlists:

Total: Over 800 videos on the Small Biz Thoughts channel
340+ SOP videos
265+ Relax Focus Success videos

Plus . . .

Training, Courses, Seminars on Managed Services
Product Reviews
and more

You can always check out my YouTube Channel and subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/smallbizthoughts

OR my Relax-Focus-Succeed Channel at https://www.youtube.com/relaxfocussucceed

Community News

SmallBizThoughts.org

July 7th Roundtable:

Rob Marenich on Entrepreneurship and Community Service

Members: Join us Thursday July 7th at 9:00 AM Pacific

Actually, join us EVERY Thursday at 9:00 AM Pacific. But don't miss the big monthly Roundtable when we talk to someone who brings a new and different perspective on running a successful business.

Very often, we find people who are super smart and often outside the SMB IT business. We get them away from their prepared presentation and have a 60-minute conversation about their perspective on success.

Our July Roundtable guest is Rob Marenich

Topic Entrepreneurship and Service

Rob is an entrepreneurial consultant, working with young businesses and leaders in need of an experienced business consultant, serving across horizontal industries and all markets.

He also volunteers for SCORE – US Small Business Administrator, plus has a nonprofit mentoring program for veterans. And, most recently, he’s starting an organization to help the citizens of Ukraine.

Your "Join" link is always in you Community Dashboard.

All recorded member meetings are in the Member Call Archive. And all past Roundtable recordings are under the Community/Roundtables menu.

Join us!

If you haven't seen the latest news video, check it out here.

Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community News July 2022

That's it for this week. I'll see you at the meeting on Thursday.

Thank you!

:-)

Picture of the Day

The Radio Shack Twitter channel claims it has not been hijacked. But the that's what you'd claim if you took over someone else's account, right?

Who knew was still an @RadioShack?

:-)

Live Events Calendar

What's Here?

This calendar lists two kinds of things: LIVE in-person events from any organization that focuses on the SMB consulting community; and MY events, whether live, webinar, etc.

If you have live events on your calendar that may be useful to others in the SMB Community, please let us know. We'd be happy to list them.

Of course: Everything here is subject to change based on Covid. Click the links for the latest details. Please send updates so we can post them.