by Adam Stuflick, on Feb 21, 2020 4:45:00 AM
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.
First and foremost it's important to recognize that an MSP that tries to be everything to everyone will find it very difficult to succeed, especially with limited resources while starting out. We talk a little bit about the challenge of meeting customer expectations in an upcoming blog post. Look for themes and commonalities in the types of customers that are naturally attracted to your services, and speak with existing clients to understand how they found you. This should provide you with some insight on how you may be able to specialize as you progress.
The next logical question is - what can you offer existing clients that will provide them with an impressive degree of personalization, compassion and greater sense of security? (These are key elements which endear clients and build long term relationships.)
As a provider of managed backup services, one thing you can start today is adhering to a set schedule in which client backups are reviewed. This offers you the opportunity to understand client needs, maintain client satisfaction, and offer some key industry differentiators such as:
- 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. - 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. - 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, the customer should feel good about it. They'll know that their MSP has their back with an ongoing process in place that ensures backup restorability and data continuity. Work with the NovaBACKUP MSP team to implement a backup testing process that helps set you apart from the cloud backup competition.
