Building an MSP: Focus on the Customer Experience

BY IT GLUE | September 14, 2017

Customer experience is everything. After all, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for an upgraded experience and 66% of customers who switch brands do so because of poor service. The truth is, no matter the size of your MSP, happy customers mean a happy business. Last week, we discussed how delivering a strong brand promise creates a great customer connection. Here are some tips to ensure that your focus on the customer experience helps your bottom line.

Measure what matters

To know whether you’re delivering a great experience, you have to be able to measure it. With the aim of reducing churn, some metrics to establish are turnaround time on tickets, Priority 3 resolution times, and number of tickets per seat. The faster your turnaround time on tickets, the more satisfied the end user. But your customers remember the critical incidents more than the routine ones, so the better you can carry out P3 resolutions, the more your service stands out from the competition.

Higher tickets per seat figures might mean this customer hasn’t been taking your advice, in particular with respect to updating their stack. In which case, this seat may be more profitable for a less noisy customer who is willing to invest in the sort of proactive IT management you’re selling.

Create client scorecards

Create two types of client scorecards. Have one that is client facing, which communicates where customers stand on their technology, and one that is internal. The client-facing scorecard increases the chance of clients upgrading. This is because you clearly let them know if they are lacking in some areas. For increased effectiveness, include visuals for great, okay, and bad ratings. Customers appreciate this clarity and icons also help to create a sense of urgency.

The internal scorecard rates the profitability of your clients. Some clients are grade-A worthy, others might be closer a C. If clients have low margins, fire them and make room for more A-grade quality customers. Make each customer count, value the good ones over the bad, and don’t carry dead weight.

Response time over resolution time

A common mistake is to promise customers you can solve a problem in a specific time frame. However, this guarantee may not be feasible. If you don’t know what the problem is to begin with, how can you be certain you can fix it in a given time? Instead, focus on how quickly you respond to the problem. Quick responses de-escalate the sense of emergency with clients almost every time, and this further enhances the customer experience.

A great customer experience leads to increased satisfaction, retention, referrals, and ultimately, a profitable business.

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