Client expectations about managed service provider backups will be the focus of today's article. Where does the miscommunication between smart technical people and equally (sometimes) smart clients go so very wrong?
I will also list a few suggestions that may help avoid that awful feeling you get when you have that sudden realization that your client has an expectation that your premium backup solution is going to deliver on something that it is not capable of.
While you are here, Take a look at some of our otherbackup-related resourcesbelow that may interest you:
So get strapped into that favorite chair of yours as we navigate a valuable range of talking points on client expectations that will help you instill the correct set of client expectations for your selected backup and recovery solution.
Structured content development is an essential aspect of the IT industry whether it be setting appropriate client expectations on your best cloud backup package or the steps involved on how to set up a new client on your backups as a service solution so that your trained employees can fault-find in a time effective fashion. It enables IT hardware and desktop services to manage and maintain the IT infrastructure of their clients effectively.
Technical Staff Communication Skills
It has been my experience that the more training and experience a technical employee gains over their working life, the more likely they are to believe everyone around them are deficient in basic intelligence. They do not comprehend that thinking this way is actually demonstrating a deficiency in their abilities.
My advice is whenever you notice a group of your technical staff start to become critical of another person's ability to do something technical related, you nip the behavior in the bud as it is cancerous to a support desk. Remind them that their job is to help people and the very reason they are being employed is that they know more than the people they are helping.
So many support desk environments I have seen tend to allow toxic behavior like this to carry on without issue. Fostering an environment that focuses on helping rather than blaming makes a massive difference and yet requires very little effort if practiced early on.
My view is that this is an absolutely disastrous strategy to take and I speak from experience. Senior techs tend to believe that everyone around them knows what they know or at least a large part of what they know and this distortion of reality causes them to be the single worst type of person to write documentation for others who are less qualified or experienced.
My experience is that give it a week or two and senior techs cannot even follow their own documentation let alone others being able to follow it.
I found that if you train staff in your documentation format and give them detailed instructions on how to present technical documentation then the best staff to carry out this process are those with between 2 and 4 years of experience.
They will not skip steps, give excuses on why they do not use screen shots and have their focus split on 3 other areas. Yes they may have done the process a dozen times and know exactly what to do without a help guide but that is the very reason they should not be allowed in charge of writing documentation, they will assume too much and you will end up with a how to guide that should have 100 steps that ends up with 7 and will be as useful as pockets on a singlet.
A technician that is unfamiliar with the process being documented is more likely to capture far more steps and be more willing to impress with quality work.
Clients That Think It Is Always Your Fault?
There are several reasons why a client will blame you for backup problems as well as general service desk issues and they are:
The client has legitimate concerns that are caused by you that can be improved upon.
The client has legitimate concerns that are caused by you that cannot be improved upon.
This one can be like losing body fat, it is the easiest and hardest thing in the world to do. You may know you need to increase staff numbers, invest in better help desk software or get more experienced staff, however if you do not have the cash flow to facilitate this then knowing may be the easy part, it's the doing that is the hard part.
How often have you run into an issue where you spend ages on a backup problem, contact the 3rd party vertical provider only to be told that they are aware of the problem, it is a problem that is regularly seen and they can rectify it when it occurs, however there is no actual fix for this issue? This is an example of a problem that is going to continue to occur and that you have no control over.
The solution to this is to contact your client and discuss the situation with them. Let them know that you have no power to rectify either the frequency of the problem or the length of time it will take to rectify. Ask them how they want to handle the issue.
The important thing here is that you manage your clients expectations otherwise they may lump these particular third party issues in with other problems they are having and form the view that you are just not very good at your job.
Everything Is Your Fault
So I am assuming you have gone out of your way via meetings and other discussions with the client leadership demonstrating in the most reasonable way possible the source of the issues raised and you have determined that the client is being willfully ignorant, what do you do?
I want to take this moment to step on any optimism you might have in this situation. If you have communicated to an objectively reasonable standard and you continually notice that the client seems to have a forcefield around them that prevents logical and reasonable communication from penetrating it then nothing you will ever do is going to change them.
Willful ignorance is surprisingly common especially where accountability and extra cost may be the result of understanding the problem at hand. From when I started my own MSP right the way to the end, I would estimate the laws of 80/20 were in effect.
I would estimate that the time I have spent either owning an MSP or working for an MSP, I have encountered a spectrum of that 20% both with clients as well as people below and above me when working for service providers.
I have never had success in changing anyone that exhibits this type of personality. They will also consume the most amount of your time while paying late and playing mind games. This is assuming you have done your level best to explain to the client the situation and you have an otherwise good strike rate in communication skills in general.
A person that has the best intentions and works hard to resolve problems through good communication will never be a match for willfully ignorant clients. Eliminate them as soon as you possibly can and I guarantee you that the time saved allowing you to focus on the 80% of great clients will more than make up for the temporary loss of income.
TOP TIP: If your largest client has this character trait then I strongly advise that you begin chasing new clients so that when the inevitable occurs, you can carry on with minimal disruption.
No Problems - You Are Charging Too Much
I liken this to a young plumber who drives half an hour out to a customer and spends 5 hours working on a problem with the dishwasher before handing an invoice over for $550. The customer feels they have their moneys worth and happily pays the bill, no further issues.
The exact same problem and an old experienced plumber turns up and belts the dishwasher with a hammer and fixes the problem within 10 minutes. The client gets a bill for an hours worth of work plus travel time of $150 and hits the roof, rings up the experienced plumber and claims they are being ripped off and will not be paying the invoice (wasting even more of the plumbers time)
He tells the client that its OK he appologizes and will re issue the invoice. Client then receives an itemized invoice of:
$5 for hammer
$45 for call out fee
$100 knowing where to hit the dishwasher.
I bet you know how that would have gone down and yet the experienced plumber saved the client $400 on the identical job. It is the perception of value. The reality is that the experienced plumber saved time for both him and the client because of their experience but that does not matter, it will not matter.
If you are a great backup service provider then all of your expertise will go into processes and procedures on the front end. Likely if you are taking over from an average service provider where their strategy generated more support tickets then the number of service tickets will drop quite quickly which leaves the client asking the age old question "why am I paying you"
This is another communications related problem where you will have to contribute part of your labor towards demonstrating where the value is and trust me, it is harder than you would know. I found the best strategy is to record ticket frequency and times and explain to the client that less is more.
The less number of backup service tickets or general service tickets means huge savings related to downtime for your client. It is important at this point to communicate that any change is likely to result in service tickets going back to where they were with the last provider and asking the client to clarify "Are you actually saying you want us to deliver more downtime for your staff to convey our value to your organization"
This should convince most people that trying to gauge value this way is a very poor metric. Whatever you do, do not consider offering discounts at this point.
Turn the tables and explain that because of the efficiency improvements your staff have put in place for your clients staff, you are considering either asking for a bonus or increasing rates to reflect the value being brought to the table. That should help to reduce the demands for freebies for doing a good job although it can result in a lost client, do you want to deal with clients that do not value what sets you apart from the rest?
Backups and Client Expectations
With the above points in mind, client expectations as they relate to backup and recovery solutions are more complicated than the usual communication issues.
Actually, it is not the backup expectations that clients have an issue with, they do not care about the backup side of things. Clients will only care about the restoration component. I realize it is a bit like saying it's not the speed that kills but the sudden stop at the end; however it is also technically true.
There is a common saying that expectations lead to more pain than anything else in this world and it tends to make sense. When you sell a disaster recovery platform to a client without setting the appropriate level of expectation, their default belief will be that your solution is capable of handling any incident where information needs to be recovered.
We know that there will be situations where the data recovery plan will be unable to recover client information. The best course of action to reduce the risk of being responsible for damages in this particular case is to always have a better backup option available and offered.
If you say to a client “this is what we have, it is the best there is and it is a take it or leave it scenario” and the client agrees to it then finds out 2 years later that they have lost information that cannot be recovered resulting in serious financial loss then there is a strong chance you will be held responsible for this event.
If however, you had offered extra features that would have avoided the current situation and have evidence that it was offered and declined then the chance of you being held responsible diminishes significantly. Even better is if you can reproduce the signed copy to the client then there is a good chance they will decide not to proceed with a legal claim in the first place.
After all, your primary goal is to avoid engaging in any legal action as regardless as to who wins, it is still very expensive to defend yourself in court.
Will they read them? You would be surprised, I used to get a majority of my clients reading my monthly newsletter and a reasonable minority of their staff would also read them. Bonus points if you can produce a newsletter that had an article that directly addressed the data loss incident the client is taking you to court for.
Even if they do not read them though, it demonstrates you took action to avoid whatever situation the client is now having. Is it a bullet proof fact that is going to win you a case? No, but it is a little element of a well thought out defense against legal attacks.
The idea is to avoid legal action so if you can show the client that you wrote about the risk of what they are going through and demonstrated you offered a solution for it, this may prevent them from going through the courts in an attempt to recoup perceived damages.
That is the ideal scenario because once it gets to a judge or jury who think a subnet mask is some sort of nautical based halloween costume and will not pay attention and not really understand what is going on, the outcome could go in the client's favor no matter how unfair that decision actually is.
Most jurors and judges are going to be indirectly clients of service providers who no doubt will be able to draw on some bad experience or two where the service provider acted badly and so that will also impact any decision. There will be very few instances where someone with your point of view will be judging you.
Sales documentation coupled with good contract and technical documentation and having it delivered by someone who is capable of converting complex topics into simple explanations that are still accurate ensures that the clients expectations and the backup product you deliver are at the same level.
Where there are holes in your backup solution, offer upgrades or application add ons that will plug the hole. This is not about making something bulletproof, it is about demonstrating that you offered a solution to a problem and the client said no. This means do not be tempted to just keep adding features to your primary backup solution thinking that is the right thing to do.
Backup options are your safety net in this situation. They show that you offered a solution that would have prevented the current circumstances. I go so far as to say that there should never be a backup system that solves every problem, there should always be a backup option specifically designed for the client to say no to.
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:
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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.
