Anyone out there running businesses wants to be able to grow their enterprises – it just makes sense! However, for many MSP owners, scaling up their firms and products can come with a bittersweet realisation – what happens if they lose the ‘personal touch’?
I’m referring to the idea that, eventually, your company might grow to such an extent that you no longer have time to offer the same one-on-one care and service to your customers. What if you need to start focusing more on running your firm and less on taking care of people?
Don’t worry – it’s a common concern, and for many MSP owners, it won’t come to pass. However, it’s still important to plan ahead so you can keep building your business without losing sight of the people who have helped you succeed.
It’s absolutely possible to scale up an MSP and still maintain a personal, friendly relationship with customers. You just need to take a few careful steps and to be mindful of where you’ve come from as well as where you’re heading.
In this guide, I’ll take you through some key tips to keep in mind while growing your MSP to ensure your brand stays friendly and personable while going from strength to strength.
Why Customer Satisfaction Matters – Regardless of How Big You Grow
Let’s be clear – a growing MSP is great news for customers. The more you expand, the more you can improve your services and products, extend into new regions and specialisms, and even offer more features to improve customer experience.
However, it’s easy to lose sight and start adding flashy solutions to your service offerings for the sake of doing so. Just like all those added extras you add to hotel trips or vehicle purchases – do you, or rather your customers, need them?
Don’t fall into this trap!
One of the first things you should always do when scaling up an MSP is to focus on your customers’ current needs. A growing business that retains the personal touch is one that continues to tap into its audience’s pain points – rather than just expanding for the sake of conquering the market.
That said, we all know that scaling is never an exact science. Your MSP could have started from a very different point to your peers’ – and there are no precise checkpoints or timescales when it comes to growth.
You need to keep adapting and upgrading ad hoc, and while doing so, you should anchor yourself to your customers’ needs.
What’s more, it’s always worthwhile focusing on your sales and marketing strategies to keep efficient and profitable during this process. It’s something Darren Strong, of Focus Technology Solutions, discussed with Richard in his episode of TubbTalk.
None of us are here to tell you how to keep your customers happy. However, what we can do is share a few tips on how to continue making them your priority, even as you evolve.
Keeping Your Customers at the Heart of Everything: 10 Key Tips
It’s also a good idea to network with other MSP owners! The IT Nation’s Dan Scott spoke to Richard about why embracing MSP community groups can be highly beneficial for measuring growth. Joining said groups and gaining insight into how other companies handled customer relations during upscaling could be extremely beneficial.
Retaining and welcoming customers is a careful balancing act. And, yes, you’re likely to need some help to do this as you scale, no matter the speed at which you’re growing.
I’ve put together some tips to help you get to the heart of what really matters to your business – and how you can keep your customers feeling happy and appreciated while you continue to build your bottom line.
However, remember that these tips are only useful as generic pointers! As mentioned, MSPs vary in terms of size, starting points, and growth speed. Consider this a nice launchpad of sorts to get you thinking, or maybe even moving in the right direction.
Let’s get started!
1. Make security your number one focus
I really can’t stress this one enough! Customers are placing incredible trust in you to keep their interests, money, and data secure. Break that trust, and you’ve lost your customer.
It’s easy to lose sight of security strategy when you’re trying to scale up at pace. However, you should ideally make it your number one priority, regardless of what you do as an MSP.
Ensuring you have firm data retention policies in place and a rigid security posture will reassure customers that you still care about their safety.
Invest in regular cybersecurity testing and make your security focus known to your customers. Set up clear policies, explain how you handle their data, and be ready to answer questions.
Showing you care isn’t enough in this instance – you need to back up your intentions with action. Otherwise, a data breach or hack that occurs due to a lack of preparation could do irreparable harm to your customer relationships.
2. Make customers a clear part of your growth plan
If your growth plan solely focuses on acquiring new clients, upgrading tools and premises, and boosting revenue, you might want to rethink.
Of course, it’s reasonable to focus on all of those things when growing your MSP. However, the key is to keep your customers’ pain points in mind while you grow.
Carefully map out each step in your process and ask yourself how you feel customers might be impacted by each decision.
For example, what if you need to increase your costs to accommodate a new service partner. How might your customers respond to such a hike? Could you mitigate this by giving your base ample space and time to react and adjust? What if you need to move physical premises – how might your local customers react?
It’s impossible to please everyone, and ultimately, you need to do what you have to when it comes to scaling up. However, you can apply critical and pragmatic thinking to problems like these. Consider how to soften blows and ensure your customers know you’re thinking of them.
For example, you could simply slow down your growth plan. This could give customers extra time to get accustomed to your changes – while you won’t get where you’re going at speed, making customers a focus of your plan will help to keep them on-side.
3. Be mindful of fee changes
I’ve mentioned this in a brief example above, but put yourself in your customers’ shoes. If your MSP announced it would be increasing prices by 5% and only gave you an impersonal email warning about it around a week in advance, you’d be annoyed!
No one wants to pay more money for services unnecessarily. Unfortunately, a fast way to lose customers (and therefore the personal touch) while you scale is to rush into hiking prices.
Instead, think carefully about the packages you offer. Could you offer more value in the services you provide at an additional cost? Is there a way you could adjust your pricing tiers with notice?
You should also take time to carefully research your market. What do competitors offer for the same price? Do they have any membership or loyalty schemes, or new buyer deals?
To retain long-term customers, one of the best ways to cushion fee changes is to offer a blanket discount over several months. Of course, the way you roll this out – and how long for – will depend entirely on your individual circumstances.
4. Invest in customer care solutions
While you grow your business, it makes sense to invest in services and partnerships that will support your expanding customer base. However, along the way, it also makes sense to invest in resources that directly support your customers and how you communicate with them.
One of the biggest worries and challenges MSP owners have when they start scaling up is that they lose contact with some of their longest-standing customers. This is especially the case if you’ve grown your brand from the ground up and have several customers who have been with you since the early days!
However, it’s reasonable to expect that, as the MSP owner, you might not always have the time or availability to handle every individual customer query, or even to speak to people directly. That’s where things can get a little impersonal, but you can mitigate this by delegating customer care.
Consider funding an in-house customer care team – one that knows your products and services well, and can embody your brand and personality in every conversation.
Hiring and funding an in-house team can be the more expensive option over outsourcing, but many customers might feel they forge closer links with people who are physically close to the brand – especially if they know you personally!
For your longest-tenured customers, this might even be considered the ‘next best thing’ to talking to you personally.
Of course, there are still benefits to outsourcing your support centre. As Uptime’s Jason Kemsley discusses with Richard, you don’t have to be the only voice of your business. Sometimes, it’s just about finding a personable team that fits your brand.
Find New Ways to Provide the Human Touch
Another option to consider is setting up specific account managers for customers. This might not be an approach you can take for lower-paid packages, so you might want to consider it a premium perk.
Regardless, assigning a personal account manager means your customers rest easy knowing there’s always a direct line of communication. There’s someone they can speak to who knows their cases and knows their usage and habits.
It’s also a great way to keep that personal touch alive between you and your customers. After all, who wants to deal with faceless robots? Speaking of which…
5. Avoid going all-in on artificial intelligence
Unless you’ve been in outer space since 2022, AI has been a huge talking point across multiple industries. It’s safe to say we’re living in an age where machines can handle some of our simplest and most mundane tasks with impressive skill and precision.
There are also plenty of efficiency, productivity, and cost-saving advantages to using AI when handling customer accounts. For example, many businesses use AI chatbots to help with queries at the point of sale and to address existing customer concerns.
But… it’s all so impersonal!
Again, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Let’s say you have a server issue and you need your managed team to run diagnostics. However, instead of presenting you with a human advisor, your MSP gives you a chatbot with predefined messages and a library of popular answers.
Don’t Sacrifice the Human Element by Relying on AI!
It’s not only impersonal, it can be frustrating – especially when you have a complex concern that requires a human expert to understand context and even show empathy!
Yes – there are huge benefits to using AI when it comes to growing firms and managing customer accounts and queries.
And there are plenty of great use cases for it. But if you want to retain that personal touch, you should seriously consider putting the brakes on.
One of the best ways to ensure your MSP retains that human connection as it grows is to simply employ humans to speak with humans! You could use a chatbot for some front-facing concerns, but don’t be quick to assume AI can handle all of your customers’ questions.
It’s a quick route towards losing customers who simply want to talk problems out with a friendly expert. And, if part of your selling proposition is that you offer a human touch to complex issues – then you would do best keeping AI at arm’s length. That is, when it comes to customer-facing tasks!
6. Maintain a clear face of the business
No business owner sets out to make their enterprise a faceless entity. That certainly goes for MSPs, too – especially when there is such a burgeoning industry out there.
If anything, as you scale, it’s reasonable to want to try and stand out in the best ways possible. One of the best routes to avoid your MSP falling into the ‘faceless’ trap is to make sure you’re visible – that is, you, the person behind the business.
You, your directors, and any teams you work with should have clear visual profiles on your website, and publishing content under your name and photo is also wise.
By keeping your image and personality front and centre of the brand, you’re ensuring people remember that you’re a human entity, and that you genuinely care about keeping their needs at the forefront too.
You might also want to take part in social media videos, record interviews and podcasts. Or you could write guest posts for other publications.
Even as you grow, people will continue to associate your name and persona with your business and expertise. This is especially comforting for customers who might worry about losing contact with you as your enterprise scales up.
Keeping your name and face in the spotlight – and your marketing carefully managed – is just good MSP PR. Consider interacting directly with people via social media and online forums, too. Show your customers that you’re just another person, trying to help other people.
7. Be very open to feedback
Let’s keep this point brief – no one likes receiving bad news. However, the way you accept and process feedback, particularly in public, greatly impacts your MSP’s brand worth – particularly if you are in the middle of scaling up.
Give your customers plenty of opportunity to raise concerns. Again, you could assign specific account managers or provide direct channels to members of your team.
It’s also a good idea to take full ownership of cases. Whether publicly or privately, owning up to mistakes and explaining how you intend to remedy situations will go a long way with people who are already frustrated.
All you need to do then is, of course, follow through. How you do this will vary from case to case, of course. But, again, try to limit the number of automated feedback channels you have available. When someone has a legitimate concern, the last thing they are likely to want to do is spend hours talking to a chatbot.
8. Be proactive
One of the best ways to ensure your customers know that you value their support is simply to follow up with them. It’s easy to assume that a purchase or a project is one-and-done, but for MSPs, customer relationships are often long-term.
Therefore, take the time to reach out to customers and check temperatures. Make sure the services and support you provide are continuing to address their pain points.
No news isn’t always good news. Again, with a team of account managers on the ground, you could establish an outreach campaign to ensure customers are satisfied at specific points of the management cycle.
Being proactive about customer care shows people that you are genuinely concerned about their needs, and that even when they’re not interacting with you directly, you want to continue providing exceptional human service.
Of course, not everyone wants to be coddled or checked up on! Test the waters from customer to customer and find patterns that benefit specific needs.
9. Keep a sense of humour
It’s good to laugh, provided the circumstances call for it! Many brands and businesses lean into cheeky or sarcastic humour to help connect with people on a human level.
It’s not always appropriate – it depends on the services you offer and the audience you serve. But when used effectively in marketing, it can give your MSP a fantastic human edge.
While you scale up, think about your current marketing campaigns and branding. Are they feeling a little dry or impersonal? Could you add a little personality or humour to try and engage with people more?
This is a step that I don’t necessarily recommend you address on your own, unless you have specific marketing experience or insight.
Therefore, make plans to work with your marketing and PR teams to brainstorm ways you can add personality and humour into your persona. Coupled with a human face and voice, people will find it easier to connect and relate to you as you continue to grow your MSP.
Naturally, it’s wise to address this as early as you can in your growth journey. Suddenly becoming a comedian overnight will be jarring to existing customers and offputting or patronising to potential new contacts.
10. Keep innovating
An innovative attitude to developing MSP services and products shows people that you’re invested in their needs and what they’re likely to face in future.
Continuing to offer the same services and solutions (while potentially increasing prices) is a fast track to stagnation and poor public opinion. What’s more, that approach is only likely to cement your reputation as a business that’s less invested in its people, but more in simply making profits.
Innovating, upgrading, embracing digitisation, and adjusting service offerings – particularly in line with public demand – shows your customers that you’re still in touch with their pain points and that you genuinely care about what they’re facing.
Innovating new products and services shows that you want your customers to have convenient lives – there’s genuine empathy behind such decisions, not just a desire to build revenue.
To customers, an MSP that’s continuing to evolve based on customer needs and demands is likely to be more exciting and engaging than a faceless entity.
Therefore, one of the best ways to show people you haven’t lost sight of that human connection is to keep approaching their challenges with new and engaging insights.
In Conclusion
Scaling an MSP is hard work. There are lots of moving parts, and one of the biggest challenges is ensuring your customers know that there’s still a human entity behind a growing enterprise.
Thankfully, as you’ve seen, there are more than a few ways you can keep this human link intact. Ultimately, it revolves around being proactive, keeping your customers’ needs in sight, and making sure they’re heard.
Of course, all MSP scaling experiences are different! Let us know if you have any tips of your own – we’d love to hear your thoughts and stories.
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I’m a small business owner and writer with over a decade’s experience in producing help guides and social content for a variety of industries. I’m genuinely interested in helping fellow business owners find more convenient ways to run their operations and support their teams.
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