How an MSP Can Establish an Effective Relationship with the Customer
In order for any Managed Service Provider – or MSP – to achieve its potential, customer communication and interaction must be as productive and easy to manage as possible. If you provide specialist services to clients and their businesses, there are a number of ways in which you can ensure that all customers can easily and effectively access and make use of everything you have to offer. In this article, we’ll explore some of the best ways in which you can ensure a strong relationship with your client base.
Determine Client Aims
Why is the customer using you? What type of business do they run and how exactly can you help them to do this more effectively? What are their overall goals? It’s important to develop a process whereby you can come to understand every client’s needs and intentions inside and out at the beginning of your relationship. Try to establish an overarching trajectory and a set of ultimate aims. This way, you can always keep your clients’ best interests at the heart of everything you do. This will make users of your service feel like they are receiving unique, tailored services at all times, and will reassure them that you completely understand them and what they are trying to do.
Clear Communications
Keep your clients up to date with everything you do on their behalf by setting up regular reporting and appointments to touch base. This will serve as a reminder of your efficiency and effectiveness – particularly if you can put together a set of statistics that clearly underline how your services have benefitted them during the previous period. This type of communication clearly demonstrates your value to them. In return, you need your service users to feel confident that they can ask for your help whenever they need it. Keep your contact information in pride of place on your website and clearly emblazoned on all letter-headed stationery you use. Try to ensure that there is always someone to respond to their queries and requests in a timely and proactive manner. If there are any restrictions to your communication capabilities – for example, if your phone lines will only be manned for a certain number of hours per day – be sure to make this clear from the start.
User Friendly Customer Portal Solutions
You don’t have all day to be fielding calls and answering emails, and many of your customers would prefer to manage matters themselves. That’s why establishing user-friendly customer portal solutions is a great idea. A customer portal can enable users to track orders or service requests, send and receive communications, access FAQs, manage invoices, exchanging electronic documents, and much more besides. Be sure to assign secure logins to all users and design the portal so that navigation is simple and straightforward. Only give customers access to areas that are necessary for their use; you don’t want them getting hold of private data or sensitive information. You will also need to take great care when storing and handling and of their data that they have used to register on the portal.
Accessible Help Desks and IT Support
If your service includes the provision of software or other specialist tools, your customers will need easily accessible IT support software tools and care lines for tech troubleshooting. You don’t want to leave them stranded with an unusable product. There are a variety of handy IT ticketing systems for MSPs that clients can use to ask for help using your products or services. The one you choose should depend on the type of work you do. If there are certain problems that regularly crop up (that don’t constitute a flaw in your processes to be solved), you can include pre-recorded guidance in your helpline’s answering message so that clients don’t have to sit in a queue.
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