If you are like most MSP owners, you are not happy with your customer portal. There are several reasons for this starting with the fact that off-the-shelf portals are typically built for the lowest common denominator MSP. These portals are built for the widest possible audience so, by definition, they lack the ability to differentiate you from your competitors and promote meaningful client interactions.
And yet, a good client portal is a tremendous asset to a business. It can increase client stickiness, an increasingly key factor in a remote support world. It can build trust through transparency. It can facilitate efficient and meaningful MSP/client communication thus saving MSP staff valuable time. And, most importantly, it can help you grow faster by clearly demonstrating what makes you different (and better!) than your competitors. Differentiation is the holy grail of sales and marketing in a crowded commoditized market.
At my prior MSP we ended up building our own customer portal for all the reasons above. It became a key part of our sales presentations, and it helped us win numerous accounts ranging from several thousand in MRR to 50K and more monthly. It also became the presentation medium for our VCIO visits.
One particularly good example of this portal helping us compete was winning a co-managed MRR contract with a large PE backed company that had acquired several hundred small entities around the country. We were competing against several of the largest MSPs in the country, but we won the $80,000+ MRR contract because of our ability to show them inventory, documentation, and quality metrics by entity, all presented in our portal.
What follows are the elements of our portal, along with the customizable features for large clients, which made it so effective. If you do not currently have all this data in usable form, FrictionlessIT software and our consultants are here to help you get there.
Customer Portal Table Stakes – the minimum any portal should provide.
- Tickets, ticket status and drill down to ticket detail
- This capability is improved if your engineers practice real-time documentation
- Ability for Client to enter tickets
- Contact info for their support team at your company
- Ability to see open and closed invoices and, optionally, pay invoices
The good stuff – the valuable pieces that set you apart from your competitors.
- Quality Metrics to build trust and accountability. This will differentiate you.
- RMM info – backup status, patch status, malware performance numbers
- Response Times – Average response times by priority
- CX Scores and comments – Smile back, Hively, etc. scores
- Techs per ticket data – How many techs touch each ticket. The fewer the better
- Helpful Information which clients value having at their fingertips
- Breakdown of Hours by work type with drill down to ticket detail.
- Inventory with warranty status
- OS breakdown (with unsupported OS’s highlighted)
- License Renewals annually and by month and manufacturer
- Agreements and Agreement status with detail
- Recommended projects, products and work with priority and status
Additional functionality that can save you time
- List of client employees (helps with verifying identity)
- Ability to enter a request to add new employees with all relevant data to configure their workstation.
Useful customizations that are specific to each client
- Ordering equipment
- Breakdown of quality scores by location or region
- Anything you do internally that sets you apart can be presented on the website.
- Cloud application data
- Routine maintenance schedules
- Required compliance data
Another critically important feature of the portal is ensuring that your clients have easy access; not requiring a separate username and login. In addition, portal access should be customizable to show different portal pieces to different clients. Some can see all, some only parts.
Once the portal is created, you will want to ensure it is as widely used as possible. In my prior company, our account managers and engineers used it to answer client questions whenever possible to promote usage. “Let me show you on your portal….,” was how many sentences started when responding to a client question. We also used the portal as the basis for our QBR’s. In addition, we would routinely send out emails with a link to the client recommendations on their portal to further promote its use.
If you are not thrilled with your current client portal, FrictionlessIT can help.
