Providing More Value to Your Customers over Time
Providing IT and security services is not a “set it and forget it” business. To maintain client relationships, MSPs and VARs need to continually evaluate and evolve their services, the technology they provide and their communication strategies. Customer needs and demands change all the time, and service providers must keep up to ensure long-term, mutually beneficial business partnerships.
But as an MSP, how can you achieve this? Here are a few best practices you can follow:
- Demonstrate value through improved reporting.
If your clients lose track of why they’re continuing to pay you, you may not be effectively communicating what you’re doing for them on a daily basis. Regular reporting is key–as is transparency. Provide reporting of all the services you’ve provided, including successes and failures. Reporting bad news isn’t exactly appealing, but if you can demonstrate how you quickly responded to and addressed those issues–and what you’ll do to make them less likely in the future–clients will appreciate the information.
How often clients want those reports will vary based on your business and that of your customers. Some many want to keep it to a quarterly update, but many will want more frequent reports, particularly regarding uptime and security details. Providing regular updates on ticket and patch status, as well as incident reports outlining threat levels or attack/breach mitigation, will help clients see how much value you’re creating. Schedule regular meetings that focus on your performance, as well as strategic approaches to emerging client needs.
- Invest in robust RMM technology.
The right remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool can help you quickly identify and address potential system failures or security issues before they create costly downtime or data breaches. These tools not only provide a centralized dashboard for full visibility across the client base, but also help to automate more remediation and service delivery tasks and enable remote support and resolution. These tools also can help you more easily create the comprehensive reporting outlined above.
- Review internal workflows.
Just as you would encourage your customers to review and optimize processes before a technology deployment, you should periodically review your own workflows and processes to improve efficiency. The methods you established when you first set up your business, or when you first began offering a particular service, may not have evolved with your offering. The more process steps and manual activities you can remove, the more responsive (and profitable) you’ll become. You’ll also want to audit your internal security practices and training to ensure that your employees are providing a strong human layer of security to complement the solutions and services your business delivers.
- Create repeatable processes.
Once you’ve reviewed your processes, make sure they’re well defined, repeatable and thoroughly documented. This will not only help you internally, it will also demonstrate to clients that you can quickly and professionally address their needs.
- Establish reasonable SLAs.
When trying to win new business, it’s tempting to promise clients the moon, with little regard to exactly how you’ll achieve that. Make sure that service level agreements (SLAs) are
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