5 Tips For Improving MSP Client Technical Competence in 2024

Published 21 days ago5 min readTechnician Turnover in MSPs...

Improving MSP client competence will be today's article focus. This is one area that is often forgotten when running an MSP, yet client technical competence has one of the largest impacts on your profit margin as a service provider and is up there with having incompetent help desk technicians or lacking internal technical documentation.

I will look at the ways in which client incompetence can erode your profit margins and perception that you are as a service provider competent as well as 5 simple ways to improve technical competence within your clients that take relatively little effort yet can make a significant difference.

While you are here, Take a look at some of our other Network Consulting related articles below that may interest you:

Technical Incompetence Or Something Else?

As the MSP you are specifically hired to take care of the clients technical needs, and for some reason we never seem to question if the client has a base level of knowledge to undertake the work they do on their side without it overly impacting the amount of time it costs us on the MSP side.

This is where a larger more mature MSP will often have training strategies in place for their clients staff however that even with larger MSPs is exceptionally rare and something I have only seen once in my career.

The first step to determine if the client has a training or knowledge deficiency is to eliminate the possibility that it could be a communications issue and this is far more difficult than it can seem.

Often when people are confronted with a situation that they are either unfamiliar with or untrained for them the first step is to deflect blame and so this often takes the form of angry end users who will lash out or gossip about how bad the technical help is.

The above example is due to a lack of technical ability however perhaps the client has a culture of blame which flows through to support desk tickets. Your support desk staff may be on the receiving end of unprofessional behavior from these types of clients or it may be that the staff members will gossip amongst themselves over how poor the service is regardless as to how effective the help desk was in resolving their issue.

You need to be aware of this and ensure that poor moral does not pervade your own staff and it is important with a client like this, that you do not make excuses for them with your help desk with something like “Yeah they are a tough client, you just have get used to them” as you will find that talented support desk staff will resign and turnover will be high to a point where you only have a team that consists of substandard techs that stick with you because their reputation makes it difficult for them to move.

Client facing technical documentation is key here. It is great to produce a document that has a list of say 100 questions that can be asked that will determine if the clients staff member requires more training to increase their technical competence or if the problem is due to culture within the clients leadership.

If it is a cultural issue then some difficult conversations need to be had at your level with the clients leadership. It cannot be stressed enough that a client's culture and outlook and the way they mistreat their own staff absolutely has flow on effects to your own organization.

This article is only concerned with the technical side. If you have a difficult client then take a look at the following article on painful clients.

Once you have your list of 100 or however many questions created in your documentation platform and trained your staff on how to use it, you can start screening for client staff that are struggling technically in their position.

An example would be being unable to locate documents that they have previously saved in the wrong location or an inability to successfully login to a workstation they normally work at because another employee has logged in previously and so they are putting their own password in under the previously logged in username.

These are very basic levels of knowledge that every employee that works around a computer should know. Remember we are looking for the basic levels of knowledge that are missing which impacts upon our own business in the form of needless tickets being created and both our time and the clients time being wasted.

New Client Onboarding - 1

Putting in place a client employee technical evaluation strategy and making it part of the onboarding process is far less likely to cause discomfort for clients because it means you can sell it as part of the benefits your organization can offer the potential client.

After all, you are offering your technical expertise and that is the primary reason the potential client is looking at hiring you. By making it all about them and demonstrating how much more efficient they will be having staff trained to a basic level, you could potentially charge for this as an added service offering.

This can help both existing and new clients although you will have to retrospectively apply it to your existing clients. For existing clients this can be a politically sensitive evolution so you should have staff that are able to navigate the process without offending your clients.

The reason existing clients can become offended is that for a meeting over client tech competence to take place, usually it has to have become a problem and that means they are going to see any meeting like this to be a criticism of their staff. It also means it is going to be a very challenging task to attempt to invoice as an added extra on the service agreement that is already in place.

Client Technical Competence Grading System - 2

So you have included into your sales process as part of the onboarding and offboarding evolution a staff training component which will ensure that client staff will attain a basic level of technical competence.

How do you determine which client staff are competent and which ones are lacking in competence? Do you leave it to your support desk staff to wing it?

No, that would be an awful idea, you need a documented system that all help desk staff can follow that will help grade and determine which client staff need help with basic levels of technical training so that they can undertake their position within the client's organization.

As mentioned above, a relatively simple document with 100 set basic technical questions that your MSP staff can pick and choose from as part of the onboarding process will ensure a basic system is in place that will be followed.

Perhaps there may be 5 or 10 questions that can be asked during the onboarding process that are asked of every new staff member starting at your client going forward and that can be used to determine the staff members computer knowledge.

By having had the conversation with the clients leadership so they are both fully aware the evaluation of their staff is taking place then this means they will be expecting staff reviews both positive and negative to come their way.

They will see it as part of the continuous improvement cycle and will be willing to invest in extra training or in some cases, let staff members go if they are unsuited for the particular position.

It is important they expect these evaluations because if staff evaluations start appearing at monthly meetings without expectation, this can very easily be perceived as an attack on their professionalism and that rarely goes down too well.

Client Staff Hiring Process - 3

Things are improving these days however knowing how to interview for a minimum level of computer knowledge by the client is not their strong suit.

They are often hiring for a specific set of skills and computer skills are often an afterthought. By offering to either have a resource in the interview (probably overkill in my opinion) training key staff tasked with hiring new staff or creating a simple checklist of questions to ask, you can help your client hire the right people.

As an example, I am almost 50 and when I was in high school we were not taught to touch type and it is a skill that I taught myself well after leaving school. It is the single most important skill I have picked up in my working life.

As an example, if someone cannot touch type to at least 30 words a minute in today's employment market then I am sorry, that is a hard no as far as I am concerned. Questions may need to be custom written for each client as their needs can differ significantly however by having the client filter out unsuitable candidates before they hire, it helps both the client as well as the MSP.

Often you will have to negotiate with each client on the minimum standard for new hires and there may be exceptions (very senior staff in positions where candidates are limited) however putting this system in place will ultimately ensure that your support desk is not clogged with pointless service tickets that are repeated over and over like some type of macabre groundhog day.

Monitor Service Tickets Per User - 4

You are going to get some good feedback from your support desk quite quickly if you have a client staff member who continuously creates service tickets because they are struggling to absorb the basic level of knowledge required to undertake their job.

This feedback is exceptionally important and you should encourage staff to record interactions in the internal notes area of the ticket. I strongly advise though that you educate your service desk to never ever record information that you would not be able to defend if the client viewed the notes.

This is because I have seen more times than I would like the impact when a support desk resource accidentally puts the internal notes into the client facing notes. Train your staff to always be respectful of the client and to only ever use constructive criticism in the internal notes.

An example would be to use:

“I have noticed Pam is having difficulty logging in to her workstation if someone during the night shift has logged in previously. Gave Pam a training session on entering her username over the previous user's username in 3 identical tickets created in the last 2 months. Pam may require further training on workstation login tasks”

An example NOT to use:

“I cannot believe that idiot has rang up again for the 3rd time this month for the exact same issue”

From the examples above, not only does the first example explain the issue, it does it in a non inflammatory way while the second example does not explain the problem nor the remedy and if that note is accidentally placed in a client facing notes area then mark my words, someone is in serious trouble up to and including the client terminating the agreement.

By monitoring service tickets per user alone, it is not always going to be an easy way to find client staff members who are causing issues for your help desk and that is because some clients prefer to have a main point of contact and so the bulk of the service tickets could well be under their name.

I always recommend against this strategy as it is a throwback from the old days where ticket systems were not all that good and were used in an attempt to prevent client staff from creating tickets that a “super user” could solve beforehand.

The second reason is that roles vary significantly within the client organization and some users will legitimately create far more service tickets than others for an array of different reasons.

Having a combination of your MSPs helpdesk feedback along with tickets per user report will help determine if a client staff member needs to be flagged for further training.

I used to wait for feedback on client staff from my support desk before running a report on that specific user as it would avoid the situation where I would chase red herrings and waste lots of time analyzing client employees that were of no concern.

Online Training For Client Employees - 5

Having a hands off remediation process is worth every cent. So you have identified through the above steps that a client employee is struggling with their day to day job description and it has manifested itself in the form of lots of service tickets that should never have been created and or identical tickets for the same issue over a short time frame.

This scenario costs the client as well as the MSP in the form of lost hours and ultimately a lower profit margin.

As the MSP, you need a solution to train client employees that have substandard computer operation abilities that is cost effective and that means it cannot be labor intensive.

Without a system as explained above, poorly trained client employees cost you the MSP significant amounts as they churn out pointless service tickets over and over again.

It causes frustration for the client who rightly or wrongly will blame the MSP because their staff member once again cannot work on what they are paid to, because they are on the phone for a problem they have rang up about 4 times in the last month.

It causes frustration and discontent among your support desk because client staff members who struggle with basic computer problems will look to blame others and this most often manifests itself in the form of anger directed at the support desk and that can be demoralizing for any helpdesk tech.

Your support desk also has to deal with repetitive and avoidable problems day in day out which erodes their job satisfaction and if you are not careful, this will create a revolving door amongst the most talented techs in your organization.

The training deficiencies we speak of are not high level, they are at the lower level. There are a number of basic online computer training courses online that you pay a small monthly fee for access to and can even white label them so that you can deliver them as if they were your own training courses.

They come with a full suite of accountability as far as passing failing, knowing if the staff member has even watched it and how much they have watched. This gives you the MSP the ability to quickly determine if the client employee has put effort into eliminating their deficiency.

Passing information onto the client as to the level of effort the client's employee has put into working through their work performance issues is a very powerful way to assist the client determine if their employee is worth investing time and effort into. As anyone who has managed employees knows, it is so much easier to work with employees who have a great attitude than it is to deal with perhaps more talented staff with poor attitudes.

Personally, as long as someone is within a reasonable distance of achieving technical competence and they demonstrate effort to change then I will continue to put effort into them.

Conclusion

Having a system in place to flag client employees that lack ability in computer operation within an corporate or business environment and to back that up with a low cost online training system is one of the most effective ways to increase your profit margins, improve morale within your support desk and demonstrate to the client that your MSP offers a level above what most others out there are offering.

If clients are not willing to work with you in this area while also tending to blame you for what end up being significant downtime due to hiring practices they use which ignore base levels of computer competence and results in an overworked support desk for you then I strongly recommend a period of concentrated effort in educating the client on how this strategy can benefit everyone.

If existing clients are at that point and they are unwilling to change then you should definitely consider classifying any client who refuses as a D level client based on the A/B/C/D classification system with a view to ending the relationship.

This is because as an MSP you only have a certain capacity. Your goal should always be to fill that capacity with clients that are aligned with your ideals. A client that does not invest in their own staff and who is willing to put pressure on your support desk is not a client you want. Holding onto poor performing clients is the number one cause of MSP failure.

We have a number of other Managed IT Services 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

Our team specializes in strategies for Managed IT Solutions Businesses 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.