As a managed service provider, you already know that managing a client can be tricky.
It’s not just service delivery that you have to think about. Your clients need to feel that your professional relationship is here to stay and that you’re in it for the long haul. To do that, you need better transparency, tangible features, and a straightforward way to turn technical fluff into practical stuff.
Granted, it’s a tall order. So, what do you need to get started?
Well, CloudRadial, of course.
As a white-labeled MSP client portal and account management platform, we’re focused on ways to simplify client management. We’re here to make your clients happier AND to give you a way to make your client management more consistent overall.
CloudRadial offers the right mix of features that help you stay flexible enough to handle unique client requests but rigid enough so that you can build processes that scale for all your clients. Within your client-facing portal, you can deliver everything you need to simplify your client management.
Let’s take a peek at four of the most helpful features within CloudRadial that help you do just that.
1. Customized Ticketing Forms
We’ve spoken to hundreds of MSPs in different parts of the world, and there’s a shared pain that binds them all together – trying to resolve client tickets that contain insufficient information.
Solving this problem led us to create two distinct ticketing areas (called the Problem Reports and Service Requests).
The Problem Reports allow you to list a dropdown menu of trouble tickets. In contrast, the Service Catalog will enable you to present card-based catalog options (commonly used for hardware ordering, onboard/offboard forms, and more).
Both ticketing sections are based on customizable dynamic forms that help you ask the right questions to get the exact answers you need to solve the ticket. Plus, both send the results of the forms to either your connected PSA tool via API or to an email address.
MSPs love them for client management because they eliminate multi-touch trouble tickets, and they also allow the client to self-service themselves with any service catalog item they need.
See for yourself: Spotlight on Ticketing
2. Documentation Areas
Documentation systems aren’t particularly rare or special by themselves. But, when placed in specific contexts, they can make a lot of sense while providing a lot of value.
Within CloudRadial, several areas can help you fulfill your documentation efforts – from a knowledge base (aptly called the Knowledge Base) to a PDF-focused document upload area (called the Quick Starts). There’s even a lightweight LMS system that supports full-on course creation (listed under the Courses, of course).
In the portal, these different documentation sections have two strategic uses.
For starters, they give you a way to direct clients to helpful and relevant documentation that speaks to the services you can render (think in terms of guides such as “how to submit a ticket” or “how to set up Outlook on your phone”).
Rather than having tickets submitted to your team for every single issue, you use your portal-based documentation to resolve client issues even faster with helpful documents that get clients answers instantly. In turn, that can put a lot less stress on your team.
Secondly, offering these very same features to your clients adds inherent value to the relationship.
Providing them with a portal that contains documentation that they can add to and customize will give them a reason to use the portal day after day. Instead of just making it about your training and documents, it can become a shared place where they derive as much value from it as you do.
Take a look: Spotlight on Client Training
3. Report Archives
There’s a big challenge that MSPs face, and it’s only getting harder by the day: showing their clients what they actually do for them.
As MSPs shoulder more and more IT responsibility for their clients, the complexity and sheer number of managed tools slowly creeps up. Always keep in mind that 99% of the time, the client cares about results – and not the methods to achieve them.
Still, because the client is paying the bills, you can’t take it for granted that they’ll never spot-check you and ask to see proof of what you’ve been doing. You need to walk a very fine line of showing what you do for the client without bogging them down with technical jargon.
From a management perspective, that means setting up a scalable way to log these efforts.
CloudRadial’s report archive function allows you to set up folders that support file upload directly or via a unique email address. With these report archive folders, you can create a set-it-and-forget-it approach to reporting.
Should the client ask to see a log/history of work effort, you can direct them to your ultra-transparent portal. And if they never ask… then you’ve still done your due diligence in logging them.
Sneak a peek: Spotlight on Report Archives
4. Account Planner
MSPs are always looking for ways to keep their clients happy, month after month.
The open secret to keeping the client relationship fresh is to ensure that the IT strategy is always driving a higher business purpose. It’s not good enough to just render services and keep course per whatever the contract says. As the business changes, so too should the strategy and approach to IT.
The meeting to discuss changes and pivots in strategy (as well as upsell opportunities) is known by many names – commonly, the quarterly business review (QBR). However, it doesn’t have to literally happen every quarter.
The QBR is a big pain point for MSPs and clients alike because it’s usually sales-heavy, lengthy, and requires jumping in and out of a lot of technical data. Plus, MSPs take tons of time prepping for it.
In CloudRadial, the QBR experience is designed to be high-level and easy to follow for a non-technical person. It’s centered around the Planner section.
The Planner features a drag-and-drop, card-based view that makes it easy to operate during a screen share or live meeting. Running the QBR is designed to be painless – all the information needed to make informed recommendations, backed by data, exists within the portal.
We looked at Report Archives a bit earlier. That’s just one of many examples of how CloudRadial helps you aggregate talking points (in that example, from any kind of report) to drive a more strategic conversation.
No longer do the meetings need to be focused on raw sales or recapping past work – now, the QBR can be focused on the strategy that drives the business forward.
Check it out: Spotlight on QBRs
Simplify Your Client Management with CloudRadial
Though we’ve only covered four features in CloudRadial that simplify MSP client management, there are plenty more where that came from. Every feature inside of CloudRadial was specifically designed to both benefit the client and improve the “stickiness” of the relationship as well as the processes of the MSP.
The best way to see how it can help you out is to give it a shot for yourself. You can sign up for a 100% free trial at your leisure – or, if you’d like to see more about a specific feature, you can always sign up for a demo as well.
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