Are your customers happy?
One of the major reasons that clients stay with their Managed Service Provider (MSP) is what they do to create a better client experience. When your team provides excellent customer service, it permeates from the CEO to the Service Desk professional.
Does your MSP:
- Put your companies needs first?
- Build trust by asking the difficult questions?
- Staff that is curious as to how your business works and how this current issue, is impacting your ability to complete work?
These actions, allow MSPs to build a business around a customer centric interaction.
Britney Hodak sums it up nicely with the three important qualities of customer service.
Professionalism: the attitude you take towards your customers. Even when a customer is upset or behaving poorly, it is up to you to defuse the situation, if possible, and do what you can do to represent your brand in a positive light.
Patience: Every customer is different. Each customer learns at a different pace and may respond to a common practice in a way you didn’t expect. Consequently, providing high-quality service means being creative and flexible.
A People-First Attitude: With a people-first attitude in mind, your customer service strategy should reinforce the idea of human connection. In other words, exceptional service means remembering that even though we are a hired resource, the money isn’t the most important part of the relationship, it is the ongoing connection to the customer.
Why do most MSPs fall down on customer service?
The only way to improve your customer’s experience is to understand their needs.
This is not an easy task, as you are adding ‘friction’ to have the customer responses. This is not “customer satisfaction” grading, such as “how did we do”?
You need to actually question your customers about the why. When I say the “why” I’m referring to the why did they need your service?
Believe it or not, most customers don’t want to have to reach out for help. If their systems and software ran perfectly, the only time IT services and support would be needed is to on-board or off-board users. Unfortunately, there are still issues that arise from time to time, where to get their work done, a call or email to IT support is needed.
Identifying, understanding and resolving the issue for your current user and ALL the other users that may have that problem is ideal.
The second area that MSPs fall down is making your customer feel appreciated. The user is already having a tough day, that required reaching out to support to solve a problem that is impacting their ability to complete their work. Empathy is key to reflecting the feelings of the customer, who is on the phone or chat. Empathy is a necessary trait for any business, and you want to incorporate it into your service process to build trust.
What can you immediately do to improve customer service?
- Strengthen your teams skills, by talking about empathy, professionalism, and patience
- Review your customer interactions and make sure that you are setting expectations with the customer
- Follow up after resolution of the issue and make sure that it stays fixed
