24/7 Managed Service Support Desk

Our company is looking at expanding our Managed Service offerings in the New Year and this could include a 24/7 Support Desk. Currently we have 3 team members providing business hour support. I am trying to work out how many additional team members we would need to cover a 24/7 roster. Does anyone have any experience in setting this type of Support Desk up?

There would likely be a few requirements

- At least 3 team members on duty during core business hours (0800 - 1730 M-F)
- At least 2 team members on duty outside of these hours
- Ability to cover for sick/annual leave
- Must have at least 2 days off in at most 8 days

I was thinking that a rotating roster would be the fairest, likely an 8 or 9 day roster. A lot easier to find staff to do this than finding just team members to work night/weekends. Our office is in Brisbane, Australia.

Any info/ideas' would be appreciated.

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Comments

techfiend

Try to get everyone working the same time every day they work, past managing experience has shown this keeps the highest morale and most effective. I don't know about oz but in USA weekend warriors are quite common, often students that can learn during the slower times. You should be able to get away with 1 more FT 1st shift employee and a part time weekend warrior, every FT employee works every 4th weekend. For 2nd and 3rd shift each have 3 FT employees and a PT weekend warrior, each FT works every 3rd weekend. 7 more FT and 4 PT should get it done. If there's a lot of PTO then you might need 3 more PT's or ask the PT's for fulltime work at times, which might be difficult.

bhcs2014

I used to be an intern for a 24/7 MSP. Basically my duty was to answer the phone and do phone troubleshooting (after hours). If it couldn't be fixed that way then one of the on-call day shift guys would be called and they would have to go on-site. Rarely did this happen though as most of our customers weren't even working during our shifts.

It was me and 4 or 5 other interns that covered from 5PM to 8AM and weekends. Us interns were desperate for work so didn't mind the hours and bad pay. I bet if you worked with your local college you could find support for all hours and for low pay as well.

TheNewITGuy

Check out - > Managed Services Provider & Monitoring Solutions | Continuum

DanielHughes

Thanks @techfiend and @bhcs2014 for the input.
I was considering enlisting a third party Answering Service that then sends an SMS/email to an on-call tech if something needs to be actioned overnight/weekend. Most likely there will be minimal calls to begin with overnight and then we can grow into a 24/7 service

tycar86

I would suggest setting up your PBX to handle after hours calls rather than 3rd party answering service. At my previous employer, the customer could leave a message in the emergency mailbox. The PBX would email the voicemail to all support staff and would also call the on-call tech and play the voicemail. We were always able to respond within minutes.

rsutton

My company uses a 3rd party answering service (MAP communications) along with Pagerduty to wake up the on-call techs. We have used it for about 3 years and it works great!

DanielHughes

Thanks @rsutton and @tycar86