Reject penny-pinching clients

As a premium MSP, you should steer clear of bargain hunting clients… you know, the ones who try to get your service at the lowest price possible. We have learned from experience that potential customers who try to get your service at the lowest price possible aren’t the best to work with. We have seen that they will constantly question your expertise and make your job more difficult than it needs to be. 

Make promises to the client you can keep 

Premium MSPs live by the motto that If you can’t keep a promise, then don’t make one in the first place. Being able to keep your word is part of your branding. It affects your company and your reputation, and reputation is everything in the MSP world. 

Branding can’t quite be stated on a contract though. And it’s not as simple as a logo either, as people tend to think. It’s about defining a personality for your company. Think of it as describing a person… Is he or she reliable? Is he or she hardworking, brilliant, creative, etc? People have a certain attitude towards brands. If you want people to have a positive perception of yours, your brand must be at the very least trustworthy. 

The promises you make to clients must be doable operationally. Additionally, a premium MSP must manage the client’s expectations of who they think you are and what you do as a brand. If you promise the client immediate phone answering 24 hours a day, then you better follow through. However, the probability of failure is very high with promises like that. On the other hand, if you promise a certain level of service such as calling back within one hour, then your operational framework should be capable of backing that up. After delivering the assured service, companies will start to trust your brand, and take your advice for industry best practices.

Propose an ultra-premium solution to deliver excellence

Provide an ultra-premium solution for your clients that prioritizes excellent service over profit. If you’re just focused on profit, you may achieve that. If your service isn’t the best however, you’re not a premium provider. Your solution must be the finest option for that client and nothing less.

We have seen many MSPs who market their services as a premium solution, but only focus on the profit aspect for the client. This strategy is never a win for the customer as the only premium in all of this is the price!

For example, one supposedly “premium provider” we worked with was a London MSP using an Amazon-hosted desktop for Australian clients. The staff in Australia truly hated using this software since Australia had bad internet at that time. In our after hours contract with the MSP, we had to get on a call with them every day to deliver feedback about problems their clients were encountering. The MSP explained that they had an 83,000 pound proposal relying on this pilot Amazon program, so it needed to work out. But since they hadn’t done any actual consulting, testing or deploying of the technology, it didn’t matter that there was a lot of money riding on the success of the service. They were essentially just snake oil salesmen trying to make a bunch of money on empty promises. 

Premium companies always give the best possible service first and let the profits follow. One of the worst practices we see is to charge the maximum price and let the service fall into place. Please don’t do that. Instead, you need to consistently calibrate with your customers on what you can realistically deliver. 

Premium MSPs should detail in their proposals the results that they will fulfill. And yes, after you explain what the premium solution is to potential clients, a lot of companies won’t be the right fit. In the end, most of them want something cheaper, and that’s all right. This means they aren’t your ideal clients anyway. 

Offer executive-level recalibrations

From time to time, you’ll want to contact your clients on an executive level. You can do this with a quarterly email that specifically addresses the high level managers or the owners. Make it clear with whom they are speaking. You want to communicate how well your service is performing and if there are any problems. 

Those at an executive level often have a perspective on situations that other management might not. This will provide you with insights on how you can improve the service, or immediately make changes if there are complaints. 

Deliver projects on time and within budget

As a premium MSP, you can charge a fair amount for projects within a certain time frame to give yourself some buffer room for both cost and time. Just make sure to follow through on the agreed time and budget. 

Many MSPs let clients down by missing deadlines and then charging more than promised to compensate for more time spent on a project. That’s not the approach a premium MSP should ever have.

Hire front line techs with the best personality, not the best certifications

We always recommend hiring front line technicians who have strong social skills, intelligence and a positive attitude. These techs should not be hired based off of certifications, experience, and other resume-related factors. This is so important because the front line has to be the interface between you and the clients. They need to understand the clients and how to give great service within the brand framework that you’ve provided them. 

They must also  know how to navigate documentation to solve as many issues as possible. However, they don’t need to understand everything about every technology. Many MSPs we have consulted believed that people on the front line must be able to solve everything. 

That’s the wrong approach if you want to create a structure that is scalable.

What you need are frontline people who have the customer service approach and a strong  ecosystem of standard operating procedures. The latter will allow the frontliners to give clients reasonable expectations. They’ll be armed with answers for how soon a ticket can be worked on and when their next communication will be. For example, if the client booked a call, someone from the help desk can actually ring them up at the assigned time and troubleshoot their issue.  

It’s important to manage the expectations of frontline technicians and dispatchers. They are the face of your MSP business and you need to hire the right people for that role. If you use some level two technicians for your front line, they might hate it and burn out because of the wrong assigned responsibilities. Usually, they prefer to be working on projects with a lot of focus, not being distracted by having to help callers with a basic password reset. As you might assume, it’s going to be a big mess and create burnout for senior level techs.

But if you find people who are new to the industry and eager to learn, then they will provide great service to your clients and be eager to be mentored by you or by other management team members. 

Over-staff on the front lines

If your MSP has the right staffing procedures for the front lines, then you should always have a supply of enthusiastic people who are engaged in the industry and building their career. 

Such people are typically ready to learn new things as well as conquer new technologies. Your help desk workers should be ready to go as soon as a client has an issue. Only then can you give that premium service of an immediate response. 

Clients should feel like security and honesty is a VIP experience. For example, imagine a client emailed in a ticket, and within 15 minutes, some really supportive and patient person called back happy to help.

That’s the level of service we are talking about when it comes to premium MSPs, not your front line being overloaded, everyone working 15-20 tickets a day and the phone ringing all the time. Talk about a pressure cooker! 

Couple that with the tone of voice that an overworked technician might have when they reluctantly pick up the phone, and well, you’re not exactly making a great first impression for your clients. Are you? 

This is where most MSPs really make a critical mistake. They don’t employ the right type of people for the front lines. They also don’t give them the right standard operating procedures, support on the back end, mentoring or documentation.

The help desk team needs to also have room to breathe so that they are feeling fresh and not overwhelmed when answering calls. When our founder Eric started out as a helpdesk technician before creating his own company, he was under a 15 hours per week contract. 

Sometimes he only had five hours of work in a week, giving him a lot of leeway. And so, when clients would call in, he gladly picked up the phone to be of jovial service to them because he wasn’t overworked. That’s what your MSP needs–people who are happy to help, not people who are overloaded with ticket after ticket. You can get such results by overstaffing the front line.

Have a well-defined workflow structure 

This is of very high importance for a premium MSP because everyone needs to be clear on how to do their daily tasks in order to minimize micromanagement.

Here are some high stakes or critical areas of an MSP where absolute clarity is necessary:

1. How tickets come into the operation system.
2. How the escalation process works. 
3. How the first response for complaints are handled.
4. How to escalate complaints. 
5. How to reach the right account manager. 
6. Who is responsible for documentation? 
7. Who is head of sales?

The answers to questions like these mustn’t reside in a gray area. Everyone involved with these operations needs to interact as a cohesive unit. 

Structure must also be implemented for other tasks, such as ticket notes and team communication. 

For instance, if your team communicates through Microsoft Teams, everybody can write to each other and see messages all the time. But this might not be an ideal place for urgent inquiries. As well, the signal to noise ratio will be outrageously disadvantageous when it comes to receiving the most critical information. 

Your MSP must also define a workflow structure for missing documentation. Have you put in writing answers to questions like the following? 

• How should staff respond when they notice documentation is missing? 
• How do they flag and assign tickets to people? 
• How do they escalate a ticket?
• Are tickets assigned through a dispatcher or hand-picked by the technicians themselves? 
• Are escalations transfer-based or are they live escalations where two engineers collaborate on a ticket? 

You, as an owner or manager needs to consider all of these factors. You need to put it in writing, have a robust workflow structure, as well as have somebody responsible for running that system based on the standard operating procedures that you set. Additionally, there must be someone who can look at the system from a bird’s eye view, see how it’s working, make adjustments and constantly evolve the system.

Have a culture of mentoring staff and moving them up in your organization

Mentoring and opportunities for promotion are common benefits for staff working for a premium MSP. We all know about the importance of hiring eager learners, who have the intelligence and personality to progress in the industry, but maybe don’t have the experience or the right certifications. 

You need to mentor people so that they can move up in your organization, which is going to be much more rewarding for both you and them.  You should also always try first to promote your existing staff to the next position instead of hiring from outside. Use a mentoring philosophy that caters to each technician’s learning style. They will most likely need time to understand new information they are consuming. As well, they need to develop the  operational agility to resolve more complicated tickets. 

For instance, let’s say you are mentoring a dispatcher. With time, perhaps in a year or so, they can become a level one. In two years they can be a level two and so on. In the best cases, people will be loyal. They will prefer your organization to others. They will be dedicated to their career, and you won’t have to hire another level three tech for 100k. Instead, you’ll have the guy who started at entry level pay and moved his way up, and he’s super happy. He or she appreciates you for investing the time into getting their skills up to par and making them an asset to your company. Premium MSPs understand the long term value of mentoring.

Hold staff accountable through workflow rules and supervisors 

Any premium MSP knows that you must get your staff to be consistently reliable without a need for micromanaging. You can do this by creating a system of accountability using workflow rules and supervisors. For instance, a dispatcher can act as a supervisor of the helpdesk, coordinating the intake and assignment of tickets.They can make sure that all necessary information is in the system, ticket notes are in order, and that all ticket statuses are correct and up-to-date.

Dispatchers should also ensure that technicians are updating each ticket with “next steps” for progress tracking. Technicians should know how each “next step” works. For instance, if the next action for a ticket requires an escalation, they should automatically know that and assign the ticket to someone else. Also the dispatcher needs to be enforcing and controlling the structure of ticket notes. Leaving this responsibility to the technicians is a recipe for disastrous inconsistency, bad service and mismanaged expectations. 

Charge more and simplify pricing 

What is at the core of premium services? The answer is charging more than your competitors. When you do this, potential clients immediately assume that your company is superior and that they can expect the best service from you. If you have a middle-of-the-road pricing strategy, people will expect mediocre results. But if you’re a premium provider, and you can follow it up operationally, then you should charge accordingly.

Build stable contracts where happy customers contribute to a referral culture

Having a database of satisfied clients who are happy to refer others to you is crucial in our industry. In fact, some MSPs win over new clients from word of mouth alone–that’s how powerful it can be. 

Building a referral culture is very important for the stability and consistency of your business. Delivering awesome results will ultimately leave people raving to their industry friends about it.

Your MSP doesn’t even need to go all-in on marketing if your clients are referring up a storm. 

Educate the client about your service and its boundaries

Your clients need to know up front how you do business and how you don’t. You need to set the pace of your operations instead of having a ball and chain relationship with your clients having the upper hand. 

Let your clients know about all the ins and outs of the daily work that happens in your MSP, including the current processes in place and who is responsible for what. For instance, they should know what happens when speaking with a dispatcher or if they email in an incident. 

A premium MSP also sets boundaries with their clients. An example of this might be you  deploying Microsoft technology to your environment. The boundary you set is that because you have no control over Microsoft’s cloud servers, you can’t be held responsible for cloud related problems that the client incurs. However, that doesn’t mean your company shouldn’t do everything it can to find workarounds and different strategies to deal with this issue.You are, afterall, striving to be a premium MSP. 

Make promises that you intend on keeping. 

Premium MSPs always make promises to their staff that align with those that they’ve made to their customers. It’s your employees who are responsible for the service delivery to the clients, therefore they must be fully integrated and supported by you. 

Make your team feel excited to work at your company so that they can give the best possible results. Deliver on assurances that reduce any concerns they might have about the company and the way they’re being managed.

We recommend implementing best practices for your employees, such as:

• An open door policy.
• Structured work and schedule.
• Orderly workday.
• Clear and fair assigning of tasks without any overload.
• Clear communication via scheduled meetings.

You shouldn’t put a lot of pressure on your workers or give them too many tasks at once. They  will only become stressed out by large amounts of work. Your MSP should also have a reliable system in place where the ticket queue should never be so high that it conflates responsibilities between departments in order to quelch the overload.

High levels of stress are one of the main reasons why many people quit their job at an MSP. We  have seen so many companies lose their entire helpdesk staff as a result of:

• An overload of unresolved tickets. 
• An overwhelming ring group system that disrupts momentum and focus.
• Senior technicians working on projects and being expected to answer calls for low level issues. 
• Lack of documentation and ticket notes. This eats up unnecessary time for tasks and makes more tickets pile up. 

In the end, your MSP is competing against other premium providers to secure clients, so you need to treat your staff well in order to hold on to them. Be persistent in checking in on their well-being and making sure that they’re not burnt out. 

You should also hold them accountable to the same standards that they were held to in the beginning. Promise team members that their future at the company will be prosperous as long as they continue to comply with your procedures.

In the end, it’s still all about branding–employer branding in fact. When people say, “I work for this MSP,” they are ultimately representing your brand. As a premium company, you want employees to be happy and believe in your brand and leadership.

Radiate the right emotions of your brand

Before you try to go premium, ask yourself these two important questions:

1. What message or story is my brand trying to share? 
2. What emotions does it invoke? 

A brand is like a human being that has a personality. The attributes that you associate with a person, you also associate with a brand.

Make sure that your company radiates the right emotions every time someone comes in contact with it. It should be clear to customers, staff and the public what your company identity and values are simply by one’s ability to pick up on how your business makes them feel. 

Prioritizing branding like this helps people hold your company in high regard. The absence of consistency in feelings or well-defined values can stand in the way of keeping things cohesive. This is particularly true in an environment as nuanced and complicated as the MSP space. 

Stand out from the redundant “We charge twice as much” trope

Your promises to clients and your core values can make all the difference in your company feeling like a breath of fresh air compared to your competitors. 

Focus on the service first and let the profits follow, as we explained earlier. Ultimately, you’re going to be charging more than the competition so you must justify it somehow. You do that by having unique ways your business runs that other businesses can’t copy.  

Only accept clients who want your advice

Working with MSP owners or managers whose egos can’t handle hearing that they don’t know everything will not be enjoyable. So it’s important to gauge early whether or not they can humbly receive feedback. 

Think about it… How annoying is it when clients get defensive every time you suggest ways to be more organized or complain to you about recurring issues they refuse to ameliorate on their end? 

Premium MSPs are smart to only take on clients who regard them as the expert and trust their authority. Such customers will let your company implement solutions based on the recommendations you provide. 

You should also gain trust by calibrating with their needs and finding common ground with how best to collaborate. If in the end, they don’t want to take your advice or initial onboarding project, they are probably not the right fit for your company. 

After all, you don’t want bad customers anyway, right? You need to build a stable brick wall of solid trusted partners instead. Therefore, only take on clients that want your advice.

Take interest in their business model and trajectory

Premium MSPs intrinsically care about how their clients are operating and scaling. They are so invested that they can sometimes feel like they are practically part of a client’s company. 

Clients might want to outsource the IT department of their business because they believe that your MSP will provide better results than the internal IT employees. This is similar to how MSPs hire us to ultimately provide staff as well as helpdesk consultation. After working with dozens of MSPs, we can quickly assess what cogs are missing regarding an MSPs helpdesk structure and staff. 

In the end, you must look at the operations of your clients and see what technology might help to run processes more efficiently. You also need to find a strategy to target their business goals and trajectory. 

For premium clients, you want to enable them to use the most innovative solutions. When an MSP learns about a customer’s business model and pain points, they will be able to build a strong impression and become a trusted authority.  

Talk to all the stakeholders

A premium MSP should always talk to all main stakeholders when signing on a new client, instead of only the manager responsible for the IT outsourcing. 

Your first point of contact should be at the executive level because you’ll be dealing with a key manager on a daily basis. He or she will most probably be responsible for the technology of the company, so you need to see how the operations work in that company from all perspectives. 

MSPs must also calibrate with multiple stakeholders in order to better understand how to keep premium clients. By attuning to these clients’ needs on multiple levels, and speaking with the other key managers in your organization, you can have a bird’s eye perspective on what those clients ultimately need. 

Another key ingredient for this is to simply be willing to listen and tailor solutions to individual clients. Many MSPs fail on this point by having a standard offer for all clients, which creates many problems in the long run. 

Define a clear scope and boundaries in writing

To add onto our point about boundaries before, they need to, along with your scope, be in writing. The service you provide must be clear and the details should be easily referenced. 

For example, there should be clarity about what role Microsoft applications will play, or a printer servicing company, or a business application. Contact all those vendors beforehand and get information on the current state of their services, any updates and how compatible they’ll be for your service. 

By doing this, you can develop an appropriate scope for your clients and be a one-stop-shop for all of their needs. Just make sure that you have well-defined boundaries in writing with vendors as well so that you know what is and isn’t being provided to prevent headaches down the road.

For example, let’s say a client is using a VPN from a vendor on their home office computer. But when they use the same VPN credentials on their son’s computer, it’s not working, and they want you to fix the issue. 

Many times, it’s little details like this that you might not have anticipated that need clarification from a vendor. As you know, they can easily be the catalyst for those annoying tickets that end up sitting unresolved in your system forever. And the longer they collect cobwebs in your ticketing system, the faster you leave a bad taste in the mouth of the client. This is why defining in writing boundaries and scope with vendors is so critical.

Quality of experience — the client’s no. 1 need! 

The biggest expectation that your clients have is that they will be treated well and have consistent, amazing service. That’s why they’re paying a higher price after all. Your MSP must serve a client as if you are a five star hotel or a private jet. 

The technology you provide must be top notch. Your assistance must be constant and everything must flow together.  Your job is to ask clients what they want and make sure that your MSP can deliver it. 

Business is all about expectations and how well you manage them by delivering the most desirable result. Nobody wants to work with a firm that doesn’t provide the expected outcome. 

If you compromise about something that goes against your advice, have the client  sign a document acknowledging that they’ve done so. 

It might sound extreme, but you have to think like a premium service who knows best. So before compromising on anything that goes against the way you do things, have the client sign a document conceding that they understand they are going against your recommendations. 

For example, if you want them to use a particular technology, but they put their foot down in resistance, then have them sign a document acknowledging this resistance. 

With that, they must accept any consequence of not taking your advice. You might also tell the client that your company can’t provide services unless they follow the recommendation. 

Insist on your best practices

You know that saying, “Doctor knows best?” Well, you have to adopt the mentality of ‘premium MSP knows best’ and always insists on the best practices you’ve developed over the years.  As we mentioned previously, there are some situations where clients refuse to take your advice, but you still must insist on it anyway.

Also, you should constantly remind your customers of the best practices. Continuously propose the right solutions and let your client know which practices they aren’t currently following. This way, there will be an obvious reason as to why something isn’t working as they expected.

Provide a full stack with total support as much as possible

Your MSP should offer a full stack with full support as often as possible. For example, if you’re using Microsoft Cloud Services, Cisco Meraki, and Lenovo Thinkpads, offer all of that to the clients who want to sign up. 

Working with their own inconsistent stack will simply cost you more time and money. In addition to this, offer them backup internet and full support instead of billing by the hour. 

Have clear relationships and boundaries with vendors

A premium MSP must set clear expectations between themself and a vendor during the proposal. It’s important for both parties that established boundaries are transparent. 

Technicians shouldn’t try deploying what they’re not familiar with

If your MSP wants to deliver on time and on budget, your technicians should only deploy things they know how to. They  should only utilize softwares that they’re already used to working with. You can also try giving them a test during which they can implement something. 

Give idle frontliners auxiliary tasks to strengthen your MSP’s structure

If your MSP has frontliners who have some disposable time, you can give them a well-defined list of tasks that they can do while waiting for calls. These auxiliary tasks might include: 

• Checking for updates of business applications.
• Calling vendors to check on statuses. 
• Confirming information and contact details with clients.
• Checking license expiry dates. 
• Auditing documentation, confirming company contact details, etc. 

As you can see, there’s plenty of different supplementary tasks within an organization.

Ensure management has time to breathe and look at the big picture

Premier service providers really respect their management team. Instead of watching over everyone like a hawk, they give everyone space to do their thing. Your managers should be able to calmly assess your system and look into all the tickets and subsequent resolutions.

By having the space to do this, they can also find and fix any kinks in the system. Usually, these issues weren’t addressed by the standard operating procedures or escalated by the dispatcher. 

This is why the management team mustn’t feel stressed when inspecting and analyzing the system for the worst cases. In badly organized MSPs, this task is dealt with by the service desk manager, who also happens to be the lead tech and the dispatcher. No wonder these system fixes are never getting done! 

This lack of room to focus on one role at a time createst more chaos in your MSP, leading to a loss of clients who feel the effects of an overloaded staff who aren’t on top of their game.

To avoid this, a senior engineer should be a different person than the service desk manager. You can’t assume that a senior technician has enough management experience. in fact, they often have the worst social skills. 

Ultimately, a manager should look at the big picture of the operation, whereas the dispatcher has to look at every ticket, the details, their category, and status. 

Focus on the basics of your structure and why you provide your service in the first place

If you don’t know “the why” in regards to the purpose of your service, how can you become a premium MSP? It is imperative that you have a passion for what you’re doing. 

This makes it easier to have a plan for how to build a strong basis for the company, from the inception of the brand, to signing on your first clients. Without these basics, you can’t offer a premium service that’s going to be excellent and scale. So focus on “the why” of your business, its basics, and move up from there. 

Have everyone put in their part during busy times

During the busiest moments of the day is when employees really need to step up and be extra helpful and accountable. The best MSPs are able to manage the load of the front lines during busy times, and they do it by having a focused staff working on the right tasks for each person. 

Premium MSPs have success in solving numerous tickets during their times of rush hour by simply gathering all the technicians they have available to hyper focus on those tickets for a good hour. This way, the service desk load goes down from 200 to 150 tickets in one hour. When everybody is involved in managing the workload, urgent matters during busy times can be dealt with swiftly and efficiently. Also, a dispatcher can always assign and escalate urgent tickets and prevent anyone from feeling overwhelmed. 

Have a consistent process

Premium MSPs know how to eliminate all the kinks that lead to inconsistency in their operations. Inconsistency can be found in documentation, communication, escalations, etc. 

This can be avoided by creating several policies, including ones for complaints, escalations and communication.  

An escalation policy should include rules on how tickets are to be moved between technicians, workflow rules, and all details related to that. Similar rules and details should be shelled out for other policies as well. 

Have a robust escalation procedure with built-in mentoring

An efficient escalation procedure is crucial in the IT world, and premium MSPs even have mentorship built in. This means helping your technician to resolve a ticket when they don’t know the answer. 

Junior techs should reach out on a live escalation channel like the chat and ask for help. If it isn’t received, they need to perform an escalation transfer. This is ideally done through the dispatcher who transfers the ticket to a senior technician to solve.

That senior technician then needs to make a post-resolution analysis. It should have all the details about the issue, such as why the front line wasn’t able to complete it, whether due to lack of documentation, knowledge or something else. 

After this analysis, you could mentor the junior tech, or make a knowledge-based article that they can learn from. 

Perform post-resolution assessments 

MSPs should have a resolution assessment procedure for tickets that have been resolved. A  dispatcher can manage this job by going through all the tickets and sorting them into regular or more complex ones.

It’s important to know the cause of the ticket and how it can be improved upon. Tickets that underwent an escalation should be deeper analyzed by management so that they can create a guide for how these tickets can be handled better next time.

Stay in constant contact with clients

A premium managed service provider will always keep in touch with clients when working on an issue. That’s why it’s called premium! Especially if a major incident occurs, maintaining communication is key.  

For instance, if a whole network goes down on a website, you should want to make sure that the client gets a call with an update every 30 minutes. They must know that you are there for them at any moment and you are working on the issue. 

It’s critical to keep a customer up to date. Even if it’s an automated service, you can send emails  using language that is apologetic or showing appreciation for their patience.

Make expectations about the lifecycle of tickets clear 

What is a life cycle? It’s a time period after which a technician should close the ticket. It can be one to three days, or more depending on the issue. The length will be judged by the responsible technician. Eventually, all tickets should be closed and there should be no open tickets. 

Staff must also educate clients on the lifecycle policy so that they have an understanding of how much time things will take. 

Documentation must be a priority and lack of documentation must be a sin

A premium MSP has its documentation in perfect order, thus it must be a priority in your organization too. Documentation can also be connected to the bonuses you give technicians. 

A well-functioning MSP has very reliable operations that regulate the whole ecosystem of ticket notes and documentation. Everybody in the organization should be able to solve tickets as much as reasonably possible. 

MSPs should also have a clear document that outlines expectations for the company, and if any staff member refuses to follow it, they are at risk of firing or one month of probation.

Have backup power and internet available for all staff and clients

Premium MSPs are always thinking three steps ahead, and that includes backup power and internet available for all staff members and clients. Staying connected is crucial for your business. 

Hello! It’s 2021. Everybody should have a charged laptop and 4G internet on their phones for backup internet. 

In the age of remote working, your employees and clients must be online. No excuses! And you as an MSP owner should communicate this clearly from the beginning.   

Have spare hardware ready to go for all staff and clients 

In addition to backup internet and power, a premium MSP should secure spare hardware for all staff members and clients. In our practice, we have seen many tickets that could have been avoided had everyone simply had access to an extra computer. So it’s good to have extras around in the office. This will allow staff to get back to work in 20 minutes if God forbid some major disruption happens. 

We always recommend buying spare Thinkpads. It only costs 300 US dollars. While it’s not ideal, it’s optimal for getting the job done.

Have a fully staffed 24/7 help desk who knows your clients

Premium MSPs often offer 24/7 support for its clients. We highly recommend against a shared help desk as your staff will receive tickets from clients they have never heard of before. 

Instead, we advise using a dedicated after-hours team with one company. Support staff must know your clients, their culture and the tools they use. They should as well have excellent documentation to work with for every ticket that comes in. You might want to set up a dedicated team around the world in different time zones. 

You could do this by using our own service here at Support Adventure, which you can learn more about here. 

Provide more than one level of premium service

You should offer varying levels of premium service in order to satisfy the needs of all types of clients. Consider having standard premium, ultra premium, and super ultra premium levels of service. You can also offer a free trial for higher levels.

You can package the levels in memorable terms like bronze, silver, and gold offers, or something completely different that is more your style of terming things. 

There should be clear changes between the levels. For example, a client subscribed to bronze can receive a call back within an hour after submitting a ticket. The silver subscriber would receive a call back within 20 minutes, and the gold members would receive immediate help.  

MSPs shouldn’t offer a gold package unless they have the economic ability to hire additional staff to accommodate immediate coverage. It’s most likely that high ticket clients will buy gold and some midrange clients will stick to silver. But no matter what a client’s needs are, there is a level of premium support that is a perfect fit to keep them happy and satisfied.