Background

Accellis has managed IT and security for Cleveland businesses since 2001. The team is now 40+ strong, supporting law firms, financial services and insurance companies, nonprofits, government agencies and manufacturers, with 25+ industry awards behind them.

That kind of growth comes with a bill. As revenue climbed, so did their costs and their clients’ expectations.

Abbey DeWitt, Chief Executive Officer at Accellis, and Justin Bailey, Technical Client Services Manager, knew they needed a way to do more, without burning out their team or ballooning the payroll.

The challenge

Busy isn’t the same as profitable

For every new client Accellis brought on, the help desk got louder. More endpoints, more tickets, more jumping between tools.

Keeping up with the ticket queue alone was a daily grind.

Every request that came in had to be read, categorized and routed to the right person. When someone picked the wrong type, subtype or item (which, let’s be real, happens more than any MSP wants to admit), another tech had to go back and fix it before any real work could start.

User provisioning was its own headache. A slow or sloppy onboarding is often a new employee’s first impression of their company’s IT support. A termination that doesn’t run immediately is a security liability.

And it’s not like Accellis hadn’t tried to standardize their user lifecycle management processes. They had documentation. They had checklists. But it didn’t matter.

All of it was time the team spent not moving work forward. That’s the difference between a help desk that’s busy and one that’s profitable.

One of the most consistent things about onboardings and offboardings is their inconsistency. No matter how many checklists, diagrams or trainings you offer, it’s easy for techs to forget a step.”

Abbey DeWitt, Chief Executive Officer, Accellis

The solution

Powerful automation, right out of the box. No automation specialist required.

Accellis knew a leaner help desk and a better client experience were the same competitive edge, and that automation was how they’d get both. The team had always been enthusiastic about AI, and they’d already put a few homegrown automations to work.

What they needed next was something more robust: a solution that worked, worked fast, and didn’t require an expensive specialist hire to keep it running.

When they found Pia, it checked every box.

What I liked about Pia is the out-of-the-box automations. We didn’t have to build everything ourselves. It worked right away and was easy for our team to learn and use.”

Justin Bailey, Technical Client Services Manager, Accellis

Getting started didn’t take long. Accellis was up and running in three to four weeks. Pia’s 100+ pre-built automations meant the team saw wins almost immediately, and because custom automations could be built in PowerShell, techs could spin up new automations as needed.

Staff onboarding were the first process they automated. With Pia’s SmartForms, Accellis clients’ HR teams can now trigger termination automations themselves, either scheduling them in advance or running them on the spot. Access is cut right away and the process runs the same way every time.

Pia’s AI Triage was another big win. Pia reads every incoming ticket, classifies it and sends it where it needs to go. Where the request matches one of Accellis’ preapproved workflows, Pia resolves it end to end without a tech touching it. The judgment calls that used to eat up someone’s whole day now just happen in the background.

The results

Faster resolutions, fewer escalations and more room to breathe

Today, Pia’s automations help streamline up to 40% of Accellis’ daily tickets.

Another 10% are now zero touch. Clients submit a request and Pia follows Accellis’ preapproved workflows, escalating to a tech only when necessary.

Those automations have helped Accellis cut resolution times almost in half, from an average of eight hours to four and a half. And first touch resolution climbed from the mid-60s to the mid-80s, meaning more clients get the results they need, without a callback or a follow-up.

But that’s not the only way Accellis is improving their client experience. Thanks to Pia’s automations, they now have the capacity to send technicians on site for accounts that need more attention.

And with less noise hitting the escalation queue, senior techs also finally have time and headspace to dig into more root cause work, going beyond just closing tickets to actually fixing problems.

Pia has also changed how Accellis measures success.

For a long time, MSPs talked about how many tickets they solved. But what we really need to do is reframe tickets as interruptions, for clients and techs alike. Our escalation engineers are now able to truly solve clients’ problems and not just Band-Aid them. Everybody wants fewer interruptions in their day. And that’s what we’re here to deliver.”

Abbey DeWitt, Chief Executive Officer, Accellis

About Pia

Pia is a service delivery automation platform for MSPs, helping teams resolve tickets faster and operate with greater efficiency. Pia’s proprietary machine learning model automatically classifies, routes, and stamps tickets, triggering hundreds of pre-built automations from the moment you go live. Built to work natively inside your PSA, Pia keeps your team working where they already operate with no context switching. For MSPs who need more, Pia also provides the flexibility to create fully custom automations. The result is faster ticket resolution, higher productivity, improved employee satisfaction, exceptional client experiences, and scalable company growth without increasing headcount.