If I had a nickel in my pocket for every MSP who told me at an event that their customers “don’t want to take advantage of self-service opportunities, they just want me to fix their problems,” I would need to go to work in the morning.
Conversely, if I had a quarter for every MSP who walked up to me after a presentation and said, “I need to make self-service a priority today – my customers are at risk if I don’t empower them to get answers when they need them” I would have the same amount of money.
There is a third conversation, though—a rare and very exciting conversation, at least for me, that goes something like this. “I can’t scale my operations the way we need to if we don’t provide a place for our clients to engage with us daily. We need to be where they are, teaching them how to leverage all the tech we provide and grow as a result of our efforts. If CloudRadial can do that for me, I will be a SuperFan for life”. Whenever someone says that I stop whatever I am doing and go find a place to sit and spend an hour laying out all the revenue possibilities that the MSP can take advantage of with our platform. Why? Because nothing gets me more excited than helping MSPs scale their business without adding additional resources.
Here’s the point – most clients don’t like changes, and they like big changes even less. That is a knee-jerk, immediate reaction. It is not a reaction to self-service opportunities. Ask them how they like Amazon Prime or booking their flight online. They will almost always respond positively.
Here is another important point – over the last five years, vendor and model consolidation have created a pretty cookie-cutter MSP profile. Being just like everyone else isn’t good for your growth. It doesn’t help you tell a compelling story, and let’s face it, sometimes, just like everyone else isn’t a very high bar. If you are one of the third conversation MSPs listed above – let me give you a few arrows for your scalability quiver:
- Consolidated ticketing – managing inconsistent ticket flow is the death of scalability – it is akin to pulling out of the driveway with the parking brake engaged. Growth comes as a result of a single, scalable process, and making that process available to every single employee of every single client means the same training for everyone, a simple process that peers can share within your client base, and the ability to be part of their documented process. When your clients are building documentation around your process, how likely are they to leave you?
- Managed Education Provider – be an MEP! Your client’s weakest link and often the single largest challenge is technology training. If you don’t offer a better way to train your client’s employees, someone else will. The good news is that with CloudRadial, the LMS (Learning Management System is built in with a content library to get you started at no additional cost. How much can you charge monthly per seat for a deliverable that costs you nothing more and makes your client safer and more productive? I wonder.
- CSAT – Very few MSPs have implemented CSAT tools, and CSAT is the best way to determine both at-risk and highly satisfied customers. Current statistics suggest that just setting a meeting with a potential new client for your services costs $500 or more, and you need to talk to at least 5 to win one. The math is simple; for every client you fix and don’t have to replace, you save at least $2500 in replacement costs—probably more. Let’s try not to find out.
I could go on and on about the ROI opportunities around self-service efforts within your business, but the best way to see what would work in your MSP is to see how other MSPs are using it. Why not book an overview today to see how CloudRadial can help you generate more ROI with self-service solutions?
Ted Roller
