MSP Client Dissatisfaction And Strategies To Avoid 2024
MSP client dissatisfaction as well as the systems and strategies we can put in place to avoid it will be the pleasant and some may say heart warming topic of today’s article.
Most of us have been there, we wake up one day with not a care in the world thinking our clients only believe positive thoughts about us and wham! You get an email terminating an agreement that has, you thought, been a positive influence on all concerned.
Client dissatisfaction whether it be legitimate or unfairly perceived as well as if it is a slow burn destruction of the relationship or a sudden impact such as the one mentioned above.
We will get into each of them, why they occur as well as ways in which you can minimize the level of MSP client dissatisfaction and in some cases, fire the client yourself if you feel they are not performing well as a client.
While you are here, Take a look at some of our other IT Corporate Consulting related articles below that may interest you:
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- Managed Service Provider Facts And Figures
- MSP Documentation Strategy Failures
- MSP Applications For The Automotive industry
- Halo PSA And Why So Many MSPs Are Moving
MSP Client Communication - Slow Breakdown
This particular situation often happens over a significant time frame of at least a year and is likely the one time where the MSP is the most accountable for the client dissatisfaction.
The truth is that most of us do not like direct confrontation and clients are no different. In my experience an unhappy client will underplay how frustrated they may be in certain circumstances and perhaps bring up their frustration in an indirect way hoping that you will pick up on their displeasure.
Are these issues something that is the MSPs fault or are they reasonable frustrations? Who can tell, each situation is different. The issue here is that if you are not attuned to picking up on these easily missed complaints then it will tend to snowball over time until such a point as an event occurs where the client is so dissatisfied, they decide to end the commercial relationship.
The way around preventing this situation that leads to a service provider's clients becoming dissatisfied over time is to have a set of questions that you ask at each quarterly MSP meeting that force the client to think about their satisfaction regarding a range of common areas so that they give you the highest probability of getting genuine answers.
Certainly one of my shortcomings in my own MSP was avoiding asking questions that I might get answers to. So I would avoid asking questions where I knew deep down I would probably get answers that I did not want to hear.
It is a bit like avoiding going to the doctor because you are worried they may find something only to end up having to go and hear him say “Sorry there is nothing we can do, if only we had caught this 6 months ago” By avoiding small inconvenient events, you end up setting yourself up for disaster.
Change Of Key Staff At Client MSP
This has happened to me a number of times and that is when an MSP client suddenly replaces a key staff member.
I can give a good example here, I had a really good quality client who happened to be a real estate office and they had been a client for a good 6 years without any major issues. We were advised that the personal assistant to the owner of the business had decided to retire and a new person was going to be starting on Monday.
Counting the days from that Monday we had been replaced in less than one month. 2 weeks after she had started we were brought into a meeting and our prices and response times were questioned and the gist of it was they were unacceptable.
Of course it was just a formality, she had a close relationship with the MSP in the place she had previously worked and wanted them in place of us. The owner accepted that replacing us was a relatively minor issue if it meant keeping his new key staff member happy.
While technically this can be considered MSP client dissatisfaction, it really is difficult to point to the service provider as being at fault. No amount of dropping rates or service response times was ever going to make a difference.
The only area that I would say in my example that could be blamed on me was that I did not establish a stronger bond with the owner of the business. For some reason I had developed a really strong bond with his assistant and the owner who was rarely in the office, barely knew who we were and so it is possible had we fostered a closer relationship with the owner, we could well have held onto the contract.
The recommendation here to avoid the dissatisfaction of an MSP client is to ensure that you invest time in forming a strong relationship at the highest level of the client's organization so that you do not end up being the casualty when a new key staff member of the client wants to do a clean sweep and put their own stamp on things.
Sudden MSP Client Dissatisfaction
No doubt most of us who have run an MSP for a reasonable timeframe know the feeling of reading a termination email from a client you had thought was very satisfied with your performance.
You have done everything right, created a list of questions to ask at the quarterly MSP meeting designed to elicit the slightest levels of dissatisfaction, implemented a smiley face feedback system for every ticket and regularly kept in touch via phone calls with your client contact, all of which indicate high levels of satisfaction.
The truth of the matter is that there are nearly always signs that you can look for that will tell you this is going to occur even if knowing them cannot avoid what is coming.
The first is a decrease in response to communication across the board. Emails that used to get responded to are left unreplied, meetings get canceled at the last minute and the lack of regard for how their actions are wasting your time are more prevalent than before.
Other things are MSP agreement clarifications as well as billing concerns. They may start to become late in paying their invoices. This is a common business tactic so that the client can maintain the power when they decide to terminate the agreement.
You are much more likely to acquiesce to their demands/requests if they have 30K worth of outstanding invoices to pay and so they will build up this bargaining chip knowing the end is near.
This is a tough one to defend against, the indications are subtle and your ability to avoid it occurring is limited. Knowing ahead of time can help you put in some measures to counteract what is about to occur.
The hard part is once you start seeing these indicators, they have already made up their mind even if they have not yet decided on your replacement.
It is very difficult to resolve issues with a party that is not interested in communicating. My view on this is that short term it can be crushing especially if they are a large client, however for long term success, I guarantee that your organization is far better off selecting a replacement client that does communicate when they are experiencing dissatisfaction.
Statistics On MSP Client Dissatisfaction
Below are the statistics we captured of over 200 MSP clients and what they considered to be the reasons why they were left dissatisfied with their MSP and why most of them move on to other providers.
MSP Client Disatisfaction Survey
| MSP Client Dissatisfaction Stats | Response Percentage |
|---|---|
| Unresponsive Service | 22% |
| Failed SLAs | 20.4% |
| Lack Of Reporting | 9% |
| Unreasonable Cost Increase | 8% |
| Lack Of Planned Maitenance | 7.5% |
| Poor Technical Skills | 7% |
| Serious Security Failure | 6.3% |
| Lack Of Aftercare | 5.4% |
| Lack Of Communication During Outage | 5% |
| Continual Staff Turnover | 3% |
| Unreported Conflict Of Interest | 2.4% |
| Continual False Alarms | 2.2% |
| Too Small For Us | 1.8% |
Conclusion
While it is an easy trap for MSPs to fall into and that is believing their service levels are perfect, the biggest reason for client dissatisfaction is lack of communication between both parties at a point where both parties could have resolved whatever issue was occurring.
By putting systems in place where you are consistently asking the client tough questions you may by nature attempt to avoid then you are at least doing your part to legitimately obtain information that can help you avoid client dissatisfaction.
We have a number of other I.T consulting articles listed below that will provide you with more detailed information on a number of related topics:
https://optimizeddocs.com/blogs/consulting/consulting-index-page-01
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