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Take your Office 365 Assessment here |
In the Digital Age of ‘overnight’ success stories, the hard slog is easily overlooked. Partners like you have asked SkyKick how to improve cloud profitability, while accomplishing digital transformation effectively and efficiently.
Formulated by insights from our 20,000+ SkyKick partners, we’re excited to launch our Cloud Success Program. The program was specifically designed for MSPs to help them build, create, and execute a strategic plan for capturing and capitalizing on the enormous opportunity that is Office 365 business.
The toolkit includes ROI calculators, an Office 365 cloud readiness self-assessment, and digital acceleration playbook. Learn more at cloudsuccess.skykick.com.
NEW Office 365 Opportunity Calculator helps you:
- Acquire customers at scale
- Increase your Managed Services mix
- Transition Office 365 seats to Managed Services
NEW Office 365 Self-Assessment helps you:
- Evaluate your current business footprint and key success drivers
- Benchmark yourself against successful MSPs
- Uncover actionable recommendations that will accelerate cloud success
NEW Office 365 Playbook provides:
- 7 steps to achieving Office 365 profitability
- Actionable ROI prescriptions across sales, operations, marketing and more
- Winning strategies for improved customer retention
You may already be following along with our Cloud Success blog series, which has been leading up to our official launch of the Cloud Success program. For the latest installment in our series read on.
We’ll tackle 5 questions successful cloud service providers should ask themselves in evaluating whether or not they’re meeting client expectations across performance, quality and engagement.
Most managed service providers don’t focus enough on the client experience. In fact, about 40% of MSPs don’t track customer satisfaction at all. However, you can be certain customers are measuring your performance.
Perhaps some of the metrics customers are using are outlined in your contract or in a comprehensive service-level agreement. Or maybe the metrics are more fluid and regularly established and reviewed as part of a disciplined steering committee rhythm.
Regardless of formal metrics in place to govern your contract, clients will almost always have an internal barometer by which they measure your service. They probably spoke to other cloud service providers (CSPs) before hiring you, and they could renew those talks if they don’t feel you’re delivering your end of the bargain.
With that in mind, here are 5 questions to ask that will help focus your attention on the customer and better identify if you are meeting clients’ expectations across performance, quality, and engagement:
5 Questions to Ask:
1) Are we providing expertise and guidance along the entire customer lifecycle?
Clients should see their CSP as more than just an outsourced IT support department. Positioning yourself as a long-term strategic partner — one that is vital to clients’ success in the cloud — tells them they can count on you to provide support and scale with them. This takes a deep understanding of each client’s business objectives and vision, which can only be achieved through regular communication.
So, if you notice a client is able to save money by eliminating certain cloud assets that are underutilized, say so. The same is true if you think a client could achieve their business objectives by adding services; such as improving collaboration with Microsoft Teams or improving efficiency by developing a roadmap together for cloud transformation.
Let your customers know you can provide top-notch service no matter what size the company – and that you have the resources to support the growth of their applications and services. Help them develop a roadmap to guide that growth. Start right with SkyKick’s Migration tool, then follow up with security through Cloud Backup. Adding your own cloud service bundle can help provide solutions for your clients’ industry.
2) Do our security processes meet industry and client standards?
Security is one of the biggest concerns clients have before migration and it will remain a concern once the transition to the cloud is complete. It’s important to not only make sure everything is up-to-date, but to ensure clients understand your processes enough to feel confident in them.
SkyKick’s Cloud Backup is a tool that helps ensure security and peace of mind against ransomware or other incidents that result in lost data. Backup saves every version, of every file, and can restore lost data in just hours – reducing downtime for businesses. Providing accessible, monthly security reports and keeping clients updated about changes to security standards will assure them that cloud adoption (and working with you) was the right decision.
3) Do we fully understand clients’ compliance requirements?
If your clients operate in a highly regulated environment governed by HIPAA, PCI DSS, or other standards then it’s beneficial to have experts on staff who fully understand those rules. Compliance is important in all industries, but for healthcare, financial services, energy, and transportation companies it’s especially critical. SkyKick’s Migration technology ensures high levels of security as data is moved to the cloud. Once migration begins, it goes to the Office 365 endpoint and is not stored locally with SkyKick.
Plus SkyKick has the necessary auditing and compliance controls in place to provide GDPR-compliant data processing for partners. Supporting clients with the right coverage and audit support tells them you understand the challenges they face and can make sure they remain compliant.
4) Are we providing round-the-clock support?
Your clients’ businesses never stops, which means your support can’t either. The best MSPs provide round-the-clock access to support specialists and maintain dedicated architecture diagrams, maximizing the efficiency of every interaction that takes place within the organization.
It’s beneficial to also provide a robust, easy-to-use self-service portal for customers that contains help-desk articles reflecting real-life examples that are based on feedback from similar customers around the world. This gives them a global perspective while your CSP provides the local relationship.
5) Are we invoicing clients in a timely, straightforward manner?
When it comes to billing, complete transparency is vital. Clients expect invoices to arrive when they’re expected and to accurately reflect current service usage. Consider including a detailed description of the services provided so clients can understand exactly what they’re paying for. Eliminate paper billing – provide billing that easily interacts with other software and is safely transferred and stored.
These questions provide a starting point to help regularly audit your services to ensure you’re meeting clients’ needs.
SkyKick provides CSPs a platform to become an integral part of their customers’ cloud transformation journey. To assess if you are set to exceed customer expectations, complete SkyKick’s Cloud Success Assessment today.
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Take your Office 365 Assessment here |