Welcome to Episode 261 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…
When you are the person who started the MSP, one of the hardest transitions for you is to get away from delivering first line support to that very first set of clients that you won in your first few years. But it’s something that you absolutely have to do or otherwise you get trapped in doing technical work forever.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with technical work, but you can’t grow your business while you’re doing password resets and setting up new users, right? This problem happens to most MSP owners and the reason it’s so hard is because you used to look after these clients yourself, you personally. So they feel that they have some kind of special bond with you. And even when you’ve employed first line technicians whose very job it is to sit there and help your clients, they will still email you directly or call your mobile directly rather than speak to the help desk.
Now, this steals your time when you should be working on the business, but also reduces your ability to sell more to them during a strategic review.
You can’t be the technology strategist and first line support at the same time. Clients’ minds will only let you sit in one of those boxes.
There are a number of different ways to tackle this problem without annoying your clients, and you’ll probably put a couple of the things I’m about to talk about together into a blended solution. In fact, here are nine things that I recommend.
The first is to set clear expectations. Now, this is really easy with new clients, but hard with longer standing clients. So just remember you have to educate them, constantly. What’s top of mind for you is item 1,058 in their mind’s list of priorities.
Number two, make it easy. Put stickers with the help desk number on every single device. Put them on their hands so they can’t help but see them.
Number three, have a standard operating procedure to roll out each time a client contacts you directly. Make a plan in advance so you don’t have the emotional trauma of wondering, how am I going to deal with this?
Number four, play dumb. Tell them you don’t know how to fix that as you focus on strategy these days, but you’ll ask someone on the help desk to call them immediately.
Number five, change your voicemail to say that you’re not working tod...
