What’s the difference between a dispatcher, coordinator, and triage role? It’s a question that comes up often in MSP conversations, but the real answer might be simpler than you think. Instead of just defining these roles by what they’ve historically meant, let’s explore what they should be.
Dispatcher
In traditional setups, the dispatcher role often revolves around one person being the gatekeeper for incoming tickets, manually assigning tasks to the right technician.
This sounds practical in theory, but it often leads to bottlenecks when one person is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests. Dispatchers shouldn’t be stuck in a perpetual game of ticket ping-pong. Instead, automation should step in, allowing them to oversee more significant tasks like quality control and complex issue resolution. Rather than just distributing tickets, dispatchers should act as quality controllers, ensuring that the right issues go to the right people while keeping an eye on larger patterns.
Coordinator
Meanwhile, coordinators tend to take on a more strategic role, making sure that tickets are not just assigned but progressing smoothly.
They often work with teams to ensure that SLAs (Service Level Agreements) are met, but the manual element still eats up time and mental energy. Coordinators should be empowered with data and insights to make proactive adjustments, not just react to ticket traffic. By leveraging AI-driven analytics, coordinators can focus on optimizing workflows rather than constantly putting out fires.
Triage
Then there’s triage—arguably the most misunderstood of the three.
Triage is not about manually sorting through each ticket one by one, but rather having a system in place that automatically assesses, categorizes, and prioritizes issues based on urgency and impact.
In other words, triage done right isn’t just about organization, it’s about making the entire support process smarter and more efficient. Support ticket triage should be completely automated, with AI intelligently routing and categorizing issues the moment they come in, leaving humans free to tackle the real problem-solving. Instead of bogging down technicians with sorting tasks, automated triage ensures that the most pressing issues get attention first.
Thread’s AI-driven solutions, like Magic Agents, streamline these processes by automating routine triage and dispatching tasks. Instead of manually routing tickets or assessing priority levels, our AI handles the heavy lifting, allowing technicians to focus on resolving issues rather than managing them. By reducing the workload of dispatchers, coordinators, and triage, we help MSPs maintain better response times and overall service quality.
Want to learn how Thread’s solutions can optimize your team’s workflow? Schedule a demo today and see the difference AI can make.
