A day in the life of our Managed Service Team

Here at Smart Payment Technologies our Managed Service team of play an important role in the day-to-day life of our customers who take a maintenance and support plan out with their payment systems.

It’s important that our customers have minimal downtime, so with the plans our team can implement focus on keeping your payment systems running smoothly and to ensure maximum reliability.

We spoke to Karen Jelves who has headed up the managed service team for 8 years to see what a typical day looks like, and how they handle the quick turn arounds needed.

What is the first thing you do in the morning?

Firstly we all grab a coffee! Then we all start by going through our emails to see what swaps or queries have come in overnight. This gives us an idea of how busy the day will be so we can make a plan, as well as identify if there is anything we need to jump on urgently.

Once you’ve made your plan, and there is nothing ‘out of the ordinary’, what would you make a start on?

We will make a start on the swaps that have come in, we split up the tasks between the team so we can be as efficient as possible. We also have someone making a start on any returns from the day before, unbagging and checking them over, ready for testing.

Are you mainly testing and repairing all day?

No our days are quite varied. We get a lot of phone calls in from customers or engineers who may already be on site swapping a device. If they are having issues we try to troubleshoot over the phone to make sure the swap out can go ahead which can be quite challenging.  

Are the swaps always due to faulty devices?

Not always. We have customers who need software upgrades, so they will come back to us to upgrade and send back out. Or we have customers that need devices for a special project, so they might send back 200 devices from one end customer and need them wiping and reloading to go out to a new end customer.

What is the most challenging part of the role?

We have had instances where all payment devices have gone down at a site. We have to be reactive and jump in to get all the swaps done ASAP so the site can be up and running again.

How do you ensure you stay on top of the expected SLA?

All of our team are cross skilled, so they can flex when needed. This enables us to continually adapt our processes as requirements change to ensure we are hitting the SLAs. We coordinate with our swap partners to balance workloads and identify where engineers are urgently needed in the field, while also providing troubleshooting support from our end. As a team leader I keep a close eye on SLAs by producing customer reports each month that documents the swap information but also highlights any pain points. This helps us pinpoint areas for improvement and ensures that our next swaps are even smoother and more efficient. We are always striving to ensure the service is seamless at every stage.

If you take one of our managed service plans, the team will ensure you get:

• Proactive monitoring and reporting, ensuring optimal device performance and transaction success rates.
• Secure P2PE asset handling portal, offering real-time audit tracking and compliance management.
• Dedicated estate management specialists, providing hands-on support to keep your operations running smoothly.
• Planned maintenance and proactive upgrades, keeping your payment hardware future-ready and extending device lifespan.
• Rapid repair and swap-out services, minimising downtime and keeping your business running without disruption.