Monitoring backups For Non Agreement Clients 2024

Published 6 months ago5 min readCloud Storage or NAS...

Monitoring backups for non agreement clients will be the discussion we are going to have in today's article. My view is straight up absolutely not and it is a great way to send your MSP bankrupt but then it would be a short article if I did not at least entertain the various options you could offer to ad-hoc clients when it comes to monitoring backup solutions.

So I will raise some issues that I think demonstrates that this is not a good business strategy as a service provider to take as well as touching on general monitoring of other technology based services. I am afraid my view is you guys are way too nice way too often and it needs to be nipped in the bud.

I am very excited about getting on my high horse and lecturing on the pitfalls of being too nice in business. I suppose it is due to learning so many lessons the hard way. What is the point of going through these dreadful experiences in life unless you can pass on the lessons to the next generation.

I sometimes feel that my life’s purpose is to act as a warning sign for others.

While you are here, take a look at some of our other backup-related guides below that may interest you:

I am going to weave some Technical manuscript creation into this article. It is one of the few areas I get excited about and because it seems appropriate no matter what the topic is.

The Technical writing process is an essential aspect of the tech service industry whether it be discussing the wisdom of giving free services such as monitoring client backups for non agreement based clients discussed here or recording the steps involved on how to add a new Mac based workstation to the backup so that your L1 support staff can set the user up in a time effective fashion.

It enables Tech hardware services to manage and maintain the infrastructure of their clients effectively.

We have years of experience in working with service providers to document the process and procedures and there is no area more important to a service provider than how their clients' backup and disaster recovery systems are documented.

Client Types - Definitions

Below are the 3 basic types of clients that I engaged with when I began my own MSP many years ago. It is important to define what a non agreement client is prior to discussing it so we are all on the same page.

Non Agreement Clients - Ad-hoc Only

Non agreement customers are any organizations that you have invoiced on an irregular schedule for products or services. Some may have a different definition however I considered an ad-hoc client as anyone who we had invoiced (and they had paid) within a 12 month period for technology based services and or products which are not invoiced on a scheduled basis.

An example of an ad-hoc non agreement client would be those clients that may ring up every 3 months or so needing their infected desktop computer to be cleansed of malware and viruses.

You provide no ongoing support that attracts scheduled invoicing.

Non Agreement Clients - Block Time

This may be contentious and your view may be different. I do not consider block time to be considered a true agreement client although it is fair to say that a block time client is halfway between an agreement client and a straight ad-hoc client.

The lines can blur if you have a client that has an automated block time which is essentially an agreement without the benefits of a full agreement.

Agreement Clients - Full Agreement

A full backup agreement in my opinion is any client that has a recurring invoice for in this case a backup service or product. So you could have a client that pays $20 per month for basic antivirus security services on a single desktop computer and they would be classed as an agreement client.

The agreements as far as my experience has found is always based on a monthly time frame even though they may be paid 12 or 24 months in advance.

Monitor Non Agreement Clients

I cannot think of any good reason to monitor backups for clients not under an actual agreement.

Actually that is not entirely true because back in the early 2000s when I started offering backup solutions to my clients, I found it exceedingly easy to be sucked into the vortex providing freebies when it came to basic backup alerting.

Why not I thought, as a logical person, I thought things like “backup alerts for non agreement clients will assist with generating extra income” or “It saves us having to deploy agents and we have 1000 spare ones that we own” or a dozen other reasons that seemed rational at the time.

Out Of Control Backup Alerts

So the client who you may do regular ad-hoc work for asks if you can set up some email alerts to inform them if their in place backup fails and while you are at it, could you also add your help desks email account in there too.

They will often exclaim that it is purely an informal request and no big deal, no harm if it is not actioned etc. Your first mistake at this moment is not having a brochure on Backup alert only agreement prices and even worse you do not make the call to bring up costs immediately. The client is hoping this because it means a free service that is now an assumed risk that you have agreed to.

It's just a little thing right? No big deal, only it is a massive deal. Treating clients like friends and doing freebies like this becomes habit forming and suddenly you said it once and now you just do it without even being asked to do it.

Before you know it, you are getting 10,20,50 backup alerts coming in from non agreement based clients who are not paying for these alerts to be checked. That is time your support desk techs have to put into work you are not getting paid for.

Non Agreement Clients - Copper Wire

I have had enough experience to know that copper wire was invented by two ad-hoc non agreement clients fighting over a penny. They tend to operate at the more budget conscious end of the spectrum.

So lets allocate 30 mins a day for looking at these alerts coming in and on average 5 per day are failing. Your tech support staff then rings up each of the clients to explain that a backup that you do not manage and did not set up is failing for some reason and you just need an initial one hour pre approval of labor to attempt to resolve the backup failure.

We all should know how this is going to go for most non agreement clients. You need to allocate 10 minutes per failure on average to actually make contact with the person who is capable of making a decision and then allocate another 15 minutes allocation for your technician to attempt to convince the client the issue needs to be looked at before either getting a outright declined request or they a range of other non committal type responses so that the tech is left in a state of not actually being sure as to if they have approval or not.

So they take the initiative and rectify the backup problem. Because you do not manage the backup, did not implement it and have no experience with it, it takes 20 minutes for your support desk to rectify the problem and test it because 15 of those minutes was spent learning how it was set up.

Then you send the invoice out for an hour of time and it gets ignored and you have to follow it up a bunch of times before receiving an angry client upset because they do not believe they should have to pay for the backup work carried out. I can predict the excuse will be something like “we only wanted you to check the backup not fix it” or some other invoice dodging behavior.

5 instances of that carry on every day with say 30 or 40 clients who are all ad-hoc clients because they do not see value in signing up for an agreement and why would they, you are giving them free stuff. They all have different backup configurations and because of that it causes more stress for your employees and there is no documentation supporting their setups.

Fixing Backups You Do Not Manage Is A Minefield

Anytime you have to fix a situation that you do not manage, have no documentation for and need to do basics like install agents and modify firewalls just to try and rectify a backup that is sending alerts, that is nightmare fuel. How do you know that their infrastructure is not put together with paper clips and string?

Cheap clients that do not see the value in a backup agreement, dreadful setups that are not regularly maintained, put together by unqualified inexperienced people who inexplicably tend to have way more confidence than people that actually know what they are doing coupled with outrageous demands about dropping everything to fix things and is it really something you want to be part of?

Increasing Risk For No Reason

So apart from the time vampire that is created by taking on these free backup monitoring checks, you also assume an enormous amount of risk with no upside.

Always speak to your cyber insurance policy broker and ask them for their opinion on issues that while appearing small could end up costing significant sums of money if legal action is ever raised due to a perceived lack of performance by your organization.

You may think that because you do not invoice for the backup checks that you are not responsible if something goes wrong. That is not always true. I do not pretend to understand the complexities of the legal system however if it is found that you said that you would monitor the backup alerts and then that client loses a significant amount of data via a failed backup and then sued you.

There is a chance that you will be held responsible because of the technical knowledge you hold and the fact that you may have known the setup was not suitable.

That time the client asked you and stated it did not matter if it was seriously checked? That was said for two reasons, to get you to say yes and to not have you feel it is no big deal but the moment you say yes, you are on the hook.

Avoid Non Agreement Backup Clients?

Only if you value your sanity. Although to be fair, I never totally eliminated ad-hoc clients. I did however jack the hourly rate up so much that it was an incentive for them to either join one of our managed service plans or look elsewhere.

Towards the end I ended up only engaging with non agreement clients if they pre purchased a 50 hour block of time. This took the pressure off cash flow and ensured that disputes over invoices became far less common.

My strong advice is to avoid helping people out in the hope they will become clients. Focus on managed backup agreements and perhaps have a number on hand of someone that has a good reputation and is happy to take on non agreement clients.

Conclusion

Monitoring the backups of non agreement clients is a recipe for slowly bleeding cash. Stop handing out free service to business, they are not your friends and I am sure if a client involved in fencing came to you asking if you could monitor their backups for free would be horrified if you turned around and said “No problems, I need a new fence setup at my place on the weekend, is 7am Sunday OK with you” Why should your time be any less valuable?

We have a number of other backup articles specifically related to clients listed below that will provide you with more detailed information on a number of related topics:

https://optimizeddocs.com/blogs/backups/backups-client-index

Our team specializes in strategies for Technology support providers and we assist in improving profit margins through standardization and consistent record keeping strategies, so you can be confident that our content is tailored to your needs.

Please feel free to explore our other articles and click on any that interest you. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about how we can help you with your documentation.