When Josh Weiss founded LA Creative Technologies in 2008, he was honestly just hoping to support himself for a couple of months so he could get on the road and travel. What started as neighborhood IT support - Josh literally printed up some flyers using Clip Art - quickly flipped into a successful MSP business. 10 years into his business journey, Josh has no plans to slow down.
The LA Creative Technologies mission
In speaking to our customers, we often find their values and mission perfectly align with our own. We love that! And with LA Creative Technologies, it’s no different.
As CIO, Josh first and foremost wants to help customers add more value to their time by using technology to their advantage. He sees technology as a strategic goal that helps empower business leaders to grow their business.
Because they are based in LA, LACT focuses on creative industries and innovators.
Josh says, “Every MSP is out there selling into the same couple verticals and we are working with people who aren’t into those verticals. They really appreciate that we understand their business.”
Differentiation has always been key to LACT. They know who they want to work with, so while they may grow slower, it’s always in the right direction.
In looking for a customer who is a perfect fit, Josh suggests a couple of things:
“A lot of it comes down to having an abnormal marketing message, so by the time you get through the pitch, you know if the person is a good fit. For example, have brightly colored marketing materials. Just stand out. Listen to what people say. If they are more concerned about price instead of solution, those are the kind of people you may want to stay away from.”
Joining BrightGauge
Something unique about LACT is they outsource a lot - including their helpdesk - to Continuum and other partners. Because of this, their dispatch process has to be on point.
Josh believes in working with an IT-focused executive coach when looking to scale a business and his coach at Sea Level Operations strongly recommended they work with BrightGauge to help manage their dispatch process. It was an obvious pick for LACT.
LACT has turned dispatch into a live tool by using a custom BrightGauge dashboard to monitor their helpdesk. It has changed the way they interact with an outsourced helpdesk.
By using BrightGauge, LACT knows exactly what’s going on with tickets: how they’re being categorized, if a ticket hasn’t been seen yet, if a ticket is more than a day old, what any given day’s kill rate percentage is, and more.
According to Josh, BrightGauge has completely removed the friction of not being physically near their helpdesk. There are no longer any tickets where they are unaware of what’s going on. And instead of training their helpdesk through the use of static documents, working with a live system helps them implement their process more quickly and provide a higher level of service.
“I set up BrightGauge before a 3 week vacation and it completely took the stress off of me as an owner of a 2-employee company. It was a major, major thing to know these tickets were being pushed out and escalated faster, and just being handled better.” - Josh Weiss, Founder & CIO, LA Creative Technologies
Go-to BrightGauge features
We’re truly impressed with how much LACT gets out of BrightGauge: they integrate with four datasources and are looking to add even more.
It makes sense that they are constantly using Dashboards over any other tool. Recently, Josh and his Sea Level coach are having a good time getting Goals going as well.
He finds having a digital dashboard to play with is a huge help when it comes to reading Traction, the book many people turn to when implementing their own goals system. In fact, he can’t imagine getting much out of Traction without having BrightGauge to help him along.
In terms of goal-setting, Josh’s advice is simple: try to pick only 3 things to focus on at a time and delete what’s not needed.
Surprising benefits of using BrightGauge
Josh was hoping BrightGauge would help LACT out, but he wasn’t expecting it to completely solve his dispatch problem. More than that, he’s been incredibly happy with the level of customer service he’s experienced. Beyond our helpdesk, Josh gave us props for our blog, our marketing, and our team as a whole.
Thank you, Josh and LA Creative Technologies! We’re proud to call you our customer.
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