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| Friday, 22 July 2011 21:41 |
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Taylored Comments Centralizing Service Dispatch by Josh Peterson, Senior Consultant Centralized Dispatch. This is my answer to about 400
Centralized Dispatch is a model of scheduling engineering resources using one central position as the hub for all clients – engineer interaction. Clients interact with a dispatcher through phone, email, or some manner of ticketing portal when they have a technical problem. The dispatcher formulates immediate, short term, and long term schedules in order to meet SLA’s, address emergencies, ensure happy clients, and keep engineers billing their time for the maximum amount of time. This model takes the entire burden off of engineers and clients and places it squarely on the shoulders of the dispatcher. This is not a new idea. It is not an unproven idea. It is what some of the most sophisticated industries in the world utilize to make sure things run smoothly. Let’s take a look. How do planes come and go at O’Hare in Chicago? Do the pilots decide what time to take off? Do the pilots talk to each other and decide who should land next? Absolutely not, there are air traffic controllers watching every move, directing the pilots on exactly how high to fly, what speed, and when they will land. The pilots have almost zero control over this process and, I can assure you, they don’t want any control over that process. They are pilots, not controllers. They are experts in flying. They love to fly. Why would we rely on them to do anything else? Well, if some of you were in charge, you probably would have the pilot “self dispatch.” Why? Because pilots are smart. They shouldn’t have to be micromanaged. They should just look at the list of flights and know what to do next, right? Who do you make your appointment with at the doctor’s office? Medical Scheduler. The doctor follows that schedule every day. Who controls an NBA player on the court? Their coach does. He says run this play, call a time out, come out and rest, get back in and play. Who decides the NBA game schedule for the season? Not the players…they just show up and play; give your engineers that same luxury. Enough analogies, let’s get down to the fundamentals: 1. All engineering requests come to the dispatcher, even help desk requests 2. Clients NEVER call engineers on cell phones 3. Office phones do not round robin to engineers 4. The dispatcher OWNS the engineers day. This 5. The dispatcher is not technical and is not tier one 6. Tickets will be scheduled out as far into the future as necessary. 7. The dispatcher SCHEDULES the appointment time with both the client AND the engineer. 8. Finally, the dispatcher ensures that the ticket status is accurately updated to reflect its real state in the service process. Is it in progress? Is it waiting on parts? Is it complete? Engineers change the status. Dispatch ensures that it’s accurate. So that’s the basics. There are a lot of blanks to fill in here and maybe I’ll cover them in another post. Right now, I just want you to start thinking about what’s working in how you’re allocating your engineer’s time and what could use some improvement. Is Centralized Dispatch the answer? I certainly think so. Comments (0)
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