5 Ways MSPs Can Increase Client Satisfaction
Acquiring a new customer cost 5 times more than retaining existing ones. It’s better to keep those you have than to find new ones. Many MSPs understand this, that’s why 38% of them track customer satisfaction metrics instead of profit and revenue.
It’s a profitable strategy to focus on client satisfaction metrics as a service-driven business because the bulk of MSP profits is directly linked to customer happiness and how many customers they can retain. In fact, increasing customer retention by 5% has been shown to increase profit by 20-95%.
Now, let’s explore how you can invest in customer and client satisfaction so your MSP business grows smoothly.
How MSPs Can Track Customer Satisfaction
First, let’s have the same definition of customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is a measure of how happy and content customers are with a company’s products and services. It shows how well the customer’s experience meets their expectations.
For an MSP, these are some ways to track how satisfied clients are with the quality of service you deliver:
1. Churn rates
The churn rate is the rate at which customers unsubscribe from an MSP’s services within a defined time range. This time range is usually monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
Customers will leave, no matter how perfect your service is — but when you compare how frequently they left in one period with the rate in a consecutive period, you get the customer satisfaction level.
2. Customer surveys
You can ask for feedback from customers through surveys. Provided you’re getting honest answers, this can give you an unbiased view of your MSP’s customer satisfaction level.
Customer surveys can reveal gaps in the quality of service delivery and let you know what needs to be improved to meet expectations.
Exceptional MSPs aim to exceed those expectations. This is a surefire way to boost customer retention and loyalty. According to Khoros, 83% of customers are loyal to a company that listens to their complaints and resolves them.
3. Customer sentiment analysis
How do customers feel about your brand? They might not be saying it to you directly but with the right tools, you can find out. With customer sentiment analysis, you can track conversations about your brand via emails, chats, and social media to see the public’s perception of your MSP.
4. Net Promoter Score
Net promoter score shows how happy a customer is with your service and how likely they are to recommend it to peers and colleagues.
The survey asks them to pick on a scale of 1 (not likely) to 10 (most likely) how happy they are with your service and how likely they are to recommend it.
When you subtract the number of people who wouldn’t promote your brand from those who will, you get the NPS of your MSP business. The goal should be to get a high score.
5 Ways to Improve MSP Customer/Client Satisfaction
Here are 5 ways to improve your customer satisfaction metrics in an MSP and boost revenue as a result:
1. Set the right expectations with SLAs
Unmet expectations often equate to dissatisfaction. In fact, that’s the definition of dissatisfaction. The first step to succeeding at keeping customers happy is by controlling expectations.
Use service level agreements (SLAs) to carefully explain what to expect from your MSP services. Without that, there will be a lot of blank spaces in the minds of customers that may be filled up with unrealistic expectations.
2. Provide customer education
Only enough to give them an understanding of how your services fit into their business. They do not have to become experts but should have a beginner-level understanding of IT services and simple troubleshooting.
This doesn’t mean you’re removing your business from that responsibility. Instead, you’re helping customers use IT to power their business’s success continuously.
3. Under promise; over deliver
Going back to expectations here, but with a little psychology twist. When you set expectations at level 5 and deliver levels 7 and 8, you will not only create happiness but create raving fans for your MSP business.
This still calls for excellence. You don’t want to promise below the industry average performance (because customers are aware of that) just so that you can exceed it with little effort.
4. Keep the customer base you can handle
When you’re shuffling too many responsibilities and your service agents are stretched too thin, clients will get less-than-acceptable levels of focus. And this is a one-way trip to ruining client satisfaction.
When you have a manageable customer base, you can easily provide exceptional services to them with your available resources. According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of your revenue comes from the top 20% of your customers. Don’t lose them.
5. Train your team in customer service skills
Train your service agents in customer service. It isn’t enough to hold the key to the resolutions but how you deliver those solutions and how the customer feels after is what sticks.
Wherever your customer has contact with your business presents an opportunity to create a brand identity. You want an identity of helpfulness, empathy, and competence.
Treat customers kindly. Reach out after a resolution to ensure everything is okay. Show them you care about their success and you’ll keep them loyal.
Bonus: 6. Provide personalized experiences
In the last tip, we talked about treating customers kindly. But here’s something that can take it up several notches: Personalize customer experiences. Refer to them by their first name. Remember birthdays.
Remember an issue from last month and ask how it’s going on your next call. Make them feel you know them. Nothing builds trust and loyalty better than this and the 5 other tips in this article.
Use the Right Tools to Increase Customer Satisfaction for Your MSP Business
Have 1 or 2 tools in your arsenal to keep customer satisfaction on the right track and exceed expectations in some aspects. You can try:
- Customer Thermometer: A one-click customer feedback solution with integrations built for MSP businesses
- Compliance Manager: Role-based compliance process automation platform to remove client’s compliance headaches
- SpamTitan: Private cloud-based anti-spam solution to protect customers from spam and malware