What Customers Want from their MSP

In many ways I’m a very logical and practical guy. I try to plan my day in a logical and practical order.  It doesn’t always work out that way of course, but that’s OK - life is chaotic. I still try. I like to do things that make sense and that, for the most part, have some intrinsic value. When I was providing IT services to customers, it made a lot of sense (to me at least) to first sit down with my potential customers (sometimes for days) and figure out what they needed before I ever tried to sell them anything. It just made sense to me. One size never quite fits all and I had difficulty selling things that people didn’t need. I’m still like this, which is probably why I’m not in sales.

So the question (at least on my mind) for managed services is: What do customers want from managed services providers? I bet you want to know this too. For previous blogs my personal knowledge came in handy. For this topic however, I needed some help since I haven’t bought managed services lately (I can tell you a lot about buying organic food though, in case you’re interested).

I’ve been reminded, while pursuing a Master’s Degree over the past seven years in my spare time, never to plagiarize. Therefore, I’m giving credit for much of this knowledge to our very competent (and slightly eccentric) research department, which spends a lot of time trying to figure this sort of stuff out for you.

I have to admit, wading through research is actually fun for me (I didn’t say that I was normal).   Marketing (specifically marketing research) was my undergraduate degree focus. So here’s some of the latest information pertaining to customers and managed services based on our research:
•    Deciding what services should be externally managed services, and which should be kept internal, is still a big decision for customers. *
•    The top reason that customers outsource to an MSP is simply the lack of time/resources to manage the IT function in-house. Secondary reasons include lower costs, lack of in-house expertise, trust of the service provider they’re already using (cool), and access to the most current products.  ^
•    Customers are still trying to understand if their current data infrastructure and software will allow them to easily be managed by an MSP. I suspect that companies with a lot of proprietary systems and software are still worried about moving to a managed services environment.  *
•    The top two reasons customers will not use an MSP are that they feel they have sufficient in-house expertise and that it costs more money to outsource. In addition, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed don’t want to rely on outside technical support. Also, approximately two-thirds of them are holding back on managed services because of security concerns. ^
•    Small business (1-99 employees) customers are less likely to use managed security services or managed storage services than other organizations. *
•    Executives of your client companies are having difficulty understanding the ROI of managed services. Your customers who are technical or technical managers are worried about their own jobs (makes sense to me). ^
•    Medium sized businesses (100-999 employees) customers are more likely to use managed services overall. This is especially true for remote desktop and print services. *
•    Customers mainly want from you: 24X7 support, good customer service and the lowest possible price (in that order). ^
•    Healthcare is the biggest consumer of managed services, though finance and insurance companies have the biggest potential for growth (however, security concerns remain a big issue for them). Again, this makes sense to me.  *
•    Customers say you can improve their satisfaction with managed services by (again not rocket science): -
o    Providing faster service
o    Being more communicative and proactive
o    Providing high-quality monitoring all the time
o    Being more accessible and completing work in a timely manner
o    Answering the phone and returning customer phone calls
o    Being more innovative
o    Supporting their in-house applications  ^
•     Customers care most about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), product/service reliability and your knowledge when making a buying decision. *
•    Your customers want you to have sufficient staff knowledge, employee training and certification, compliance management, products and tools, project management skills and operations/logistics skills. ^
•    Your customers also want you to have good references, SLAs, proof of your expertise/knowledge, e.g. certification, and proof of your experience (e.g. case studies). ^

* CompTIA’s 3rd Annual SMB IT Spending Trends study, December 2009
^ CompTIA’s Trends in Managed Services study, September 2009

There you have it…a lot of useful information to mull over to be certain. But as we all know, knowledge is only as good as the action or inaction that results from it. I suspect (fear) that when most people are given data related to their business, they do nothing with it at all. Though sad, this is a bit of a paradox resultant of this amazing network of data we’ve created (which people pay you to manage) since we can no longer live without it.

As with all data, I would recommend reviewing it again and trying to find the one or two items that relate to you…items that made you think-and concentrate on them. Write them down or copy and paste them somewhere to use when appropriate. That works for me with my Philosophy course (an unexamined life still isn’t worth living). Perhaps it will work for you too!

Keep talking to and paying attention to your customers (they seem to like that)!

Please forward your comments to Paul Bittorf pbittorf@comptia.org