MSP Success and Customer Loyalty Hinge on These Three Strategies, Survey Says

Customer loyalty and driving business growth. These are two of the most important areas of focus for MSPs, as well as two of the biggest challenges. For most, if not all, customer loyalty and retention and growing one’s business are at the forefront of your MSP company goals, and are so closely intertwined it can be difficult to carve a clear path. 

Back in December, Netwrix, a vendor of information security and governance software, surveyed its MSP partners in North America in hopes of determining which techniques and activities were most successful for demonstrating value to clients and driving business growth. 

The survey uncovered three primary strategies that are instrumental in increasing customer loyalty and getting a leg up in the race in 2020: 

• Capitalize on changing market trends
• Provide vertical-specific solutions
• Partner with your vendors

Let’s dive into these a bit deeper.

Capitalize on Changing Market Trends

Security and compliance offerings could become a game-changer for managed service providers. This has already started to become abundantly apparent across all industries. Organizations of all sizes now face increasingly serious and malicious security threats and must comply with the complex regulations set forth. 

According to the survey, MSPs that have added solutions for security and compliance on top of their standard offerings report a variety of business benefits, including being able to increase customer satisfaction (51% of respondents), improve their reputation (44%) and ensure system uptime for customers (37%).

Provide Vertical-Specific Solutions

The survey found that the top industries targeted by MSPs are professional services like legal or real estate (66%), the financial sector (63%) and health care (63%). Organizations from these verticals are highly regulated and must comply with both specific industry standards and privacy legislation like the GDPR and the CCPA. MSPs that have bundled industry-specific services with solutions for auditing say they have achieved continuous compliance (87%) and improved security (55%) for their customers.

Partner with Your Vendors

Vendors and MSPs need to be tighter. Vendors can be an invaluable source of knowledge about technology, common use cases and successful implementation — information MSPs need in order to better understand customer needs, accelerate the sales process and ultimately provide more value. 

Netwrix’s Ken Tripp

Those MSPs who were surveyed claim that they have gleaned the most value from training programs and demo sessions provided by vendors (64%) and joint marketing activities. In 2020, 69% of surveyed MSPs anticipate participating in joint customer-facing events (e.g., Lunch and Learn sessions), 44% plan to take part in joint webinars with vendors and 39% will launch co-marketing email campaigns. Also, 67% are taking advantage of testimonials, reviews and customer success stories shared by vendors. This is huge, folks.

“One of the key success factors for a managed service provider is having a close relationship with each client,” said Ken Tripp, director of channel accounts at Netwrix, in the press release announcing the survey. “You need to understand their business needs and offer a solution that solves their critical issues. Close collaboration with vendors is also essential. Joint marketing activities and deep training will increase your product expertise, enabling you to address customer pain points more effectively, sell more into existing clients, expand your client base and maximize customer satisfaction rates.”