How MSPs Can Stand Out in a Highly Competitive Environment

The wonderful thing about industry is that it is constantly evolving. While new businesses, including MSPs, can service their markets by following current trends, established firms must constantly adapt to new advancements. For those wishing to expand their MSP, there must be enough differentiation between their company and the other MSPs in the same environment.

Distinction is tough to achieve and can take a long time to implement. MSPs should explore the following techniques to retain existing clients while also gaining new ones.

Creating Customer Service

A Salesforce research study found that 89% of consumers are more likely to buy following a favourable customer service experience. According to a second Talend research from 2017, 57% of respondents cited “unaddressed unfavourable reviews” as their top reason for not buying from a brand again.

Putting in place customer service help desks isn’t enough. Some useful strategies to explore for an MSP to distinguish themselves, retain customers, and get new ones are:

• Providing assistance around the clock. Only use business hours if an MSP lacks the resources to provide 24/7 customer service.
• Getting management or executives to contact clients following events. This gesture demonstrates how seriously an MSP takes errors and how dedicated they are to their clients.
• Avoiding contracts that give clients the impression that they are being nickel and dimed. Flat-fee service pricing is one approach to accomplish this.
• Make prices as clear and straightforward as possible.

When working with customers, the goal is to take concrete actions that exceed their expectations.

Examine MSP Market Differentiation

There are many different types of MSP businesses, and some specialize in a certain industry. Similar to how there are various types of specialities in IT, an MSP can specialize in an area where their strengths truly shine. However, an MSP should not be too restricted in their emphasis, or clients may dismiss them as just being capable of providing one service.

MSPs must strike a balance between what they are skilled at and delivering broad services to other regions. One approach is to focus on a certain “layer” of IT real estate, such as desktop infrastructure or networking, and offer a number of managed services related to it.

In reality, a desktop infrastructure-focused MSP might provide:

• Desktop setup
• Patch management
• User and application provisioning
• Backup and recovery services

An MSP could specialize in a particular while avoiding being pigeonholed with this type of structure.

Put Security First

Cyber dangers and attacks will continue to exist. A good place to start is by clearly communicating security recommendations or the essential importance of security. Consider the following suggestions:

• Outlining the techniques and practices that an MSP employs to protect customer assets.
• Gathering and disseminating statistics on security performance. Showing reaction times to backup and recovery services, for example, or how long an MSP has been in business without a security breach.
• Obtaining certifications such as SOC 2.

Everyone understands how important security is to businesses. Simply mentioning that is insufficient. Proving it with hard facts and demonstrating steps to maintain security builds trust and distinguishes MSPs.

Maintaining Technological Flexibility

With technology continuously evolving, there are always fresh developments, and an MSP should be consciously adjusting. One great example is backup and data recovery. MSPs used to provide on-premises infrastructure services. As more data is stored in the cloud, cloud-based backups are becoming increasingly popular. Offering a service to customers in addition to typical backup solutions would be an excellent approach for an MSP to differentiate itself.

By using these techniques, an MSP can not only significantly expand but also assist the community and its customers thrive and prosper.