One Man Shop - Managing Time and Unavailability

[LionelJohnson]

First of all let me say this thread is only about B2B. I also 'fired' my residential customers and am pretty happy after doing so. I've spent most of my IT career in a corporate environment (sys admin) and always felt like a fish out of water with residential.

I love Micah Lahren's recent articles on being a one man shop in the B2B world. It seems to work well for him. I also read Technibble's guide to B2B book which was interesting but didn't give much in details of how B2B operations are actually run. Delegation makes things simple (I have worked in IT service companies before) but I think being a one man shop adds extra complications to plan for, such as:

How do you support customers when you are out of town. Will customers accept that you may only be able to help them 'remote only' for a few days or however long you happen to be gone for. Obviously if you are a one man shop, you are not always going to be available so it would be pointless to include guaranteed response times (at least for on site work) in your contracts.

What happens if you are on site at one client office but get a call from another client who needs you at their office? Making them wait their turn is going to make your business look unresponsive. Assume that neither support calls can be resolved via remote. I would love to hear how people manage their time and commitments between customers.

I would think that it's probably a bad idea to answer phone calls while on site and talking to other customers, even if it's urgent. The client business you're attending is not going to be pleased with you using blocked hours (if that's the arrangement) and distracting your attention talking to other clients.

Some of this requires common sense to find the best solution, but I am curious about what other's procedures are. There is a huge downside of course to a) being out of town, b) making business customers wait their turn, and c) being unavailable by phone while working on site somewhere. Not that these situations occur everyday, but still requires some forethought because it effects the contracts and service description.

And please don't say employ someone, I am determined to manage as a one man army! It's a selling point in a way, because as the point was made recently, "the buck stops here" and the much lower overheads.

Thoughts?

 

[allstarit]

This a question i would like to know too. I currently do my business part time in evening and weekends. My 9-5 job is managing a helpdesk and totally see where your coming from.

For me at this point in time for my business it comes down to finding out my clients needs before signing them up. I have mostly residential and a couple small businesses. With the business ones they work from home so they tend to be flexible like the residential clients.

From a helpdesk manager point of view larger businesses definately have higher expectations on critical jobs mostly because their staff are unproductive due to pc issue and are paying them to sit around.

One thought would be to hirer a 3rd party helpdesk to answer your calls and try things remotely and escalate the issue to you onsite. I have seen some on here called RSTT ...have a read of this http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55309&page=3

In the end you can only do so much and if your client list grows ultimately your business needs to grow with them otherwise you will burn out by taking on too much work.

 

[TenYardFight]

You real need to answer your phone during business hours. Use an answering service or outsourced helpdesk if you have to. Get a hosted PBX and have your business number ring the answering service after it has tried to ring you.

 

[kaiser715]

Business clients trump residential. Then you prioritize. I look at number of users affected (server down over a single pc or a workgroup printer). Payroll problems on payday usually goes to the top

 

[frederick]

+1 for what TenYardFight said.

Sometimes more people call than we have people available to answer phones. Sometimes a voicemail is left, but this is hardly the case. Thankfully, most current customers (sla and return customers) use our website to submit a service request. But new customers don't, and my thought process on it is probably the same as theirs:

"If you can't answer the phone you are either too busy to help me, or you don't know how to run your business effectively."

Depending on your work load, you'll want at a minimum a call center to just take the message/schedule it up for you. The key here is to ensure they know your schedule. If you got a doctors appointment, and they schedule over it, you are going to be in essence shooting your own foot off. There are a few people on here who do this kind of thing, give them a call, feel for it all, and pick what works in your budget and style. You don't want to seem unavailable, but at the same time, you don't want to seem completely available. Eager beavers can sometimes come off as pushy for getting the green, and busy beavers don't have time to maintain the dam and go to beaver parties.

We are not a one man shop, however, we are considering getting one of these call centers here on TN to give us a hand, as we now have 3 24/7 companies, and can only place 1 person on the on call status a night so that way if they do end up working all night, we are only down 1 person the next day.

As a one man band, you can't afford burning yourself out. If some stuff can be done for you, and you can still make money, it is going to help you out immensely (physically, mentally, and fiscally). Think of it as growing your company without actually hiring full-time techs, and therefore giving you the ability to sleep at night, catch up on paperwork, and of course, spending time with friends and family.

Edit: Forgot to add this bit. When you encounter two businesses need you at the same time, and your staff is all dispatched out at sites, it goes by a tier system we use. We haven't angered any customers with this system, only because "it needs to be fixed now" doesn't occur that often.
Tier 1 - Everything is down. RESPOND NOW! The tech who is closer, and on a Tier 3 or lower job must respond. ASAP Response Time (we get 1 a month, sometimes 2)
Tier 2 - 50% or more degradation. They are crawling as far getting work done. Same response as above but a 2 Hour Response Time (we get 3 calls like this a month, usually some one playing with cables)
Tier 3 - Up to 50% degradation. They can still work, etc. Not a convenience call. 4 hour response time. (daily, typically a remote in, quick fix, it's done)
Tier 4 - Convenience service required. When we get to it. Take a number. (business clients normally call and schedule these)
Tier 5 - Residential Clients

Clients have yet to abuse this system. They understand that if bad things happen, we will be there, and be there quick. Because we have some clients on the far side of town from us, we contract with another shop (on that side of town) to help out, and vice versa when it is needed. Trying to cross phoenix during high traffic times is like trying to swim upstream in some serious rapids. Unless you are salmon, it's not gonna happen. So for this, contract with another shop. We have a non-compete with existing customers. They can't try to steal mine, I can't try to steal theirs. It works out for the better this way, as our prices also match.

 

[lsi]

Managing customer expectations are key and I think it also depends on who your customers are. There are customers out there for different phases of your business. I have competitors who are one-man shops and prospects that I meet are perfectly happy with them because the price is right and despite being a one-man show they have met their needs pretty effectively. On the other hand, I usually get my larger customers because they have that urgent, panic situation and the one-man show couldn't respond fast enough or handle it effectively enough and they realized how exposed they were.

 

[carrcomp]

One thought would be to hirer a 3rd party helpdesk to answer your calls and try things remotely and escalate the issue to you onsite. I have seen some on here called RSTT ...have a read of this http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55309&page=3

In the end you can only do so much and if your client list grows ultimately your business needs to grow with them otherwise you will burn out by taking on too much work.

I've heard of this RSTT ..

Yeah, our company is specifically setup to help people like you ... give me a call sometime and I'll be happy to go over our services to see how we can help.

 

[LionelJohnson]

Thanks so much frederick! That gave me a lot to think about.

It is good to know there are many ways of managing a one man shop effectively.

Thanks for all responses.

 

[frederick]

Your welcome. Even with employees, I'm working constantly. I'm always behind on paperwork, trying to remember if I paid X bill this month, and trying to balance a schedule that I and my family likes. I think for you, if you are getting busy, having one of these call centers will help you out. Especially if they can handle the remote stuff for you while you are working on site.

 

[16k_zx81]

I outsource.

I have one full time guy now, and have always run at least three-four subbies who at any time I could phone and get onsite or doing workshop repairs. I found a lot of advantages to having subcontractors, and they have afforded my business a flexibility and profitability I could not have achieved just working alone. If you get the rates set well, you can make good money off the back of their time only doing bookings. They are happy, because they get handed regular work without having to advertise or look for it (jobs "on tap"). I am happy, because I am earning while I am working on other jobs. Its a win-win. The trick is finding good people who are trustworthy and reliable. Once you have them, productivity, response time, and service standards, can be significantly affected, in my experience.

Best of luck to you

Jim

 

[unclemarv]

Just wanted to add a quick note about answering calls while onsite at a client. I have downsized and no longer have any full time techs. I used to have calls forwarded to my cell, but it was just too many interruptions. I think it also looked bad when a client saw me look at my phone and decide not to answer. One of them even asked "is that what you do when I call?"

So, now that my wife is working in the office, she answers all the calls while I am out and she will text me with anything important. If it's an emergency or I need to respond asap, I ask the client if it is okay to make a call.

I made the mistake(?) in the beginning of giving me cell number out. I don't do that anymore. If they call the office after hours, they leave a message and I get an alert on my cell phone. I can listen to the message and decide to call back at my convenience...

 

[LionelJohnson]

late reply but...

Many thanks for all your responses. Some great solutions posted here to the questions in my opening post. Subcontracting work to individuals / 3rd party helpline, outsourcing calls to an answering service when on site / after hours, prioritization based on business critical problems and number of users affected. Great answers.