7 common customer experience (CX) mistakes every MSPs should avoid 

We all have different ideas on what effective customer experience is, but not all of them guarantee great results. 

If you feel like your customer engagement could be better,  we’ve come up with a list of the most common customer experience mistakes that you might have done, you might be doing or you can avoid. Whether you’re guilty or not, you’re sure to get a lesson or two. 

1. Having a technical mindset

“Most MSPs only think from themselves outward rather than from customers backwards.”

James Warner, CEO, Invarosoft

Everything starts with the right mindset.  Being in an MSP your natural instincts may lead you to being technical. You may unconsciously approach customers with this mindset when in reality, your customers don’t care to know the technical ins and outs of solutions and can get turned off by the jargon.

When you talk about the technical aspects too much, you lose the connection and interest of your customer at the very beginning of the conversation. 

Your customers are after partnerships. They want someone to connect with and someone who will understand their challenges. That’s how you gain their trust. 

2. Too focused on “fixing the problem”

“Letting your customer know that there isn’t an update yet to a ticket is an update!“

”James Warner, CEO, Invarosoft

Customer experience isn’t all about “fixing the problem”. When you’re too tied up in troubleshooting issues, you forget to communicate with your customers. No matter how chaotic it is, letting your customers know that you’re on top of everything creates an air of confidence. 

3. Slow response times

A prospect gets in touch with you today, yet you call back a few days later. There’s good busy and bad busy, and most of the time, MSPs are trapped in the latter, failing to prioritise things that matter. 

You lose a sale even just by not calling back right away. Not everyone is willing to wait. When you’re not quick enough in getting back to inquiries, whether coming from an existing customer or a potential lead, they will most likely look for other MSPs who can respond quicker. 

4. Waiting for too long before hiring sales people

Following the previous point, at times MSPs fail to deliver fast response times simply because they lack people. A common scenario in every MSP is a business owner wearing so many hats, and overwhelmed with tech, sales and even admin tasks.

No matter what size your MSP is, you don’t need to wait for severe prospect churn before you acquire sales-focused staff. 

5. Failing to convey value

Some MSPs focus too much on pricing and packaging, yet not all your customers care about this. You tend to keep the relationship one-sided, forgetting to understand the customers’ pain points and actual needs. 

So you meet up with a customer, ready with your proposal, including the solution options and prices, and get flustered when they reject it. This is probably because it’s never based on what your customers want to achieve.

As mentioned in the first point, successful relationships in the tech industry don’t even revolve around tech at all. It’s about listening to what your customers really want to happen. 

6. Dehumanised branding

“People buy from people.” 

Take your website for example. If you’re going to use stock images of people, which your customers have probably seen from random sites, then you will immediately lose their trust. Use your team’s photos as much as possible, your familiar faces give a sense of trust and assurance that they are actually working with real humans.

Humanise your customer experience as much as possible. If you’d like to get some cool ideas on great customer experience, check out our previous blog post, 10 Ways to improve your MSP’s customer experience.

7. Thinking that CX isn’t necessary for small MSPs 

“If you’ve got a business, then customer experience matters.”

James Davis, Director of Academy ANZ,  Pax8

If you just started out and think, customer experience isn’t a priority, you are wrong. No matter how small or big you are, you need to continuously hone your customer experience strategies so you can keep up with the changes in your customers’ buying behaviors. 

And you don’t need to start on big branding points. Sometimes, it’s as simple as returning the phone call right away or understanding what the client needs to build good business cases and proposals. 

Wrap-up

Great results don’t happen overnight but when you start being consistent with delivering great customer service, your own customers will do the lead generation for you. You’ll know it when you receive praise from satisfied customers or even referrals. 

Listen to what your peers had to say on how you can improve customer experience in this on demand webinar, MSPs in Conversation: Enhancing your MSPs Customer Experience (CX) with panelists, Nigel Moore of The Tech Tribe, Jamie Warner from Invarosoft and James Davis of Pax8.