4 Steps to Get Your Techs Documenting
BY IT GLUE | January 15, 2019
Are your techs documenting? They should be. Oftentimes if they’re encountering problems on the job, it can be boiled down to poor documentation. Lack of standardization? Time waste? Onboarding too slowly? Yes, documentation is the solution. Once your techs are in a documentation rhythm, they’ll wonder how they ever survived without it.
So how do you get your techs to not only start documenting but do it consistently? Here are 4 steps.
1) Show value
Start with the basics. It’s difficult to love something when you’ve not yet seen the value in it. Start by highlighting what documentation can do for your techs once they start making it an integral part of their job. A perfect way to do this is by addressing their pain points, and showcasing how documentation will solve each of them.
Are your techs spending too much time searching for the information they need to solve a ticket? When it’s documented in one central and secure location, they’ll save time on each and every ticket, benefiting not only them but their clients too.
Are they having to re-ask clients for information, or search through endless emails just to find something that should have been documented? One of the biggest problems facing MSPs is a lack of time. But through documentation, your techs can avoid tedious and unnecessary tasks like searching for information, and focus on other projects.
Are they struggling to onboard customers fast enough? Remind them that documentation is the tool they need to speed up their processes, and ultimately help scale the business.
2) Leaders, lead
Lead by example. You know the phrase, but are you practising it? Your techs aren’t going to get on board with documentation if you’re not on board as well. Besides, once you’re documenting consistently, you’ll be able to demonstrate all of the benefits you’ve encountered.
Go one step further, and become a documentation evangelist. Down the line you can encourage your techs to become one as well, but to start, they’re going to need you to be the one to preach the gospel of documentation.
3) Make it fun
Documentation, fun? It sure can be. One option here is to leverage gamification. Make a game out of getting your techs to document and include rewards as they continue to produce valuable documentation. In IT Glue we have an Engagement feature that helps you do exactly that, alongside an integration with CrewHu, an employee recognition software.
The options are truly endless here, so get creative. One of our partners was struggling to get their techs to document, and upon purchasing IT Glue, decided that the best solution would be to set aside an afternoon, order pizza for the team, and get them to start documenting. It worked.
4) Bake documentation into the culture
To truly master documentation, it needs to be baked into the organizational culture. This means it can’t be optional. Each and every tech regardless of their position needs to be responsible and accountable for documenting. We’d even go as far to say it needs to be written in job descriptions.
Documentation should be so ingrained in your culture that when your techs are searching for client data, SOPs, or any information at all, they should be thinking first and foremost: check the documentation. Or as our partners like to say it, “Find it in IT Glue.”
We get it, documentation can feel daunting when your techs are just starting out. But follow these 4 steps, and they’ll love documentation almost as much as we do.
To find out how IT Glue can help get your team leveraging the full power of documentation, sign up for a demo today.
IT Glue is a documentation platform that helps you to streamline your processes, record and organize information, and reduce the amount of time your techs waste looking for information. IT Glue’s partners report efficiency gains almost immediately after launching the platform. Watch the demo to find out more.
