Working on the frontlines with MSPs I am always coming across inspirational success stories and taking note of their journey to arrive at their goals. From these insights, I’ve gathered quite a list of “do’s & don’ts” over the years for those offering managed IT services. This always comes in handy as I speak with new and upcoming MSPs who often ask me the all-important question, “What can I do to separate myself from the competition?”. The answer is hidden within the question itself. Offer your customers something they cannot get from the faceless industry giants.

The next logical question is - what can you offer clients that provides a higher level of personalization, compassion and greater sense of security? We’ve got a few ideas for you, and SURPRISE – they center around regularly testing backup restorability.

Start by creating for yourself a set schedule in which client backups are reviewed. Building a smooth testing process gives you a new ability to offer key industry differentiators, such as:

1. Transparency
   Customers are investing in your services to protect their critical data. Transparency creates trust, and a sense of accountability. Make sure clients clearly understand your testing schedule and procedures to give them faith in their backup integrity. Transparency should extend to all branches within your business from pricing structure to how you manage data. This encourages customers to stick around, and may even attract some new ones.
   
   
2. Health Checks
   Schedule regular health checks between your IT support team and the client. Consider how regular health checks can pinpoint weak spots in areas such as compliance, productivity and backup strategy. Not only are health checks good for catching problems early and making improvements, they also offer a unique opportunity to strengthen relationships and show the client that their investment in you has added value. 
   
   
3. Reports
   Your business should be providing the client with reports that provide important information such as backup statistics and when backups have last been reviewed. This helps MSPs to maintain a presence and set client expectations when it comes to achieving RTO and RPO recoverability goals. In the event of a disaster, the customer only need glance at the current report to understand what data is immediately restorable.

When it comes time to renew that contract for managed backup services, the client should feel good about it. Knowing that your managed service provider has your back with a process in place for testing all backups (both local and offsite) stands out as the most responsible and beneficial “must do” in the MSP world. Speak to the NovaBACKUP MSP team to implement a backup testing process that sets you apart from the competition.