Who’s On or Off The Bus?

As the owner of a managed services provider company, you’re driving the bus. You set the direction, the speed and the journey your company takes.

For leaders, one important question to ask is who you want on or off the bus.

What Do Great MSP Employees Focus On?

Let’s face it. We’ve all experienced employees who are constantly focused on themselves, looking for that extra vacation day, exploiting sick days, or pushing for comp time if they work late.

Those are clearly not the employees you want on your MSP bus.

Your ideal employee is the one who comes to you and asks one of these questions:

• “What more can I do to help our clients?”
• “What more can I do to help our company?”

These questions are a clear indication of an employee’s focus on mindset. They’re the ones you want on your payroll.

How Do We Help MSP Employees Become Client-Focused?

The first step to having a client-focused employee is to make sure your MSP is client-focused. That starts at the top and needs to be incorporated into every component of your company, from sales to help desk to consultation.

It also means collecting and sharing information about your customers — their greatest needs, what they value about your company, what your solutions mean for their success. It’s also wise to include information about clients you’ve lost and why. Sharing this information with employees helps them understand what matters most and what they can do to keep clients happy.

What Should We Look For In Hiring MSP Employees?

A recent CIO article suggests a few ways IT companies can find and retain client-focused employees:

1. Focus on Out-of-the-Box Thinking. Be sure to ask applicants for specific examples of how they focus on their clients or have them role-play a common situation and ask how they’d respond.
2. Have Them Interact. While there will many client-facing employees in your company, you want to be sure that all your workers have meaningful interactions with customers to understand the issues and importance of customer service.
3. Look at Your Hiring Process. If your company is not finding client-focused employees, maybe the ways you source, hire and train employees need to be examined.
4. Be Clear About the Culture. In the hiring process, be sure to speak clearly about expectations and the kind of company you own, with a focus on the impact of client services.

While these guidelines are important, so too is making sure that you provide the training in how to be client-centric. Equipping employees with the tools to serve your clients goes a long way to their, and your, success.

At Ulistic, we help MSPs create great marketing and websites that attract the best clients. Grade your MSP website now at https://www.ulistic.com.

Stuart R. Crawford

Stuart Crawford serves as Creative Director and CEO with Sebring, FL Ulistic, a specialty MSP Marketing firm focused on information technology marketing and business development. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience pertaining to how technology business owners and IT firms can use marketing as a vehicle to obtain success.