Managed service suppliers (MSPs) are important for IT assist. 

They provide commodity companies for infrastructure, end-user system assist, and extremely specialised assist for software-as-a-service (SaaS) functions.

Technical complexity drives hyper-growth for MSPs, who must be able to scale and maintain an efficient onboarding and early assist expertise, retain confidence, and appeal to and retain the employees required to take action.

MSP KPIs ought to be established based mostly on essential success components that keep each shopper retention and the repute of the managed service supplier.

The KPIs that assist MSPs succeed fall into three main classes:

Small and midsize enterprise (SMB) IT groups are requested to do extra with much less, and technical growth can outpace the group’s capacity to reply. Furthermore, the computing surroundings’s complexity – from the hybrid office to distributed cloud computing – and the necessity to safe the enterprise make it troublesome to draw and retain certified technicians for IT assist. 

It’s inexpensive to purchase specialist companies than to maintain up with know-how calls for. That’s why half of IT organizations favor outsourcing the administration of complicated SaaS packages, up from solely one-third final 12 months.

Whereas this development is good news for MSPs, they want a proficient workforce to assist the demand. One other key problem is delighting their shoppers with out burning out their brokers whereas managing exponential development. 

A very good set of KPIs that present a snapshot of day by day operations and shopper administration success can resolve many issues MSPs face with growing tech demand. Measuring efficiency utilizing these KPIs permits them to develop a development technique that addresses key points and improves and scales over time. This ensures MSPs keep on prime of points and keep away from dropping clients.

Right here’s why MSPs want KPIs to drive development whereas mitigating assist complexity.

MSPs want a strong KPI program to routinely reveal their success and justify their worth to their companions. KPIs present a strong and well-rounded view of MSP operations from onboarding to service supply.

Environment friendly onboarding ensures an ideal buyer expertise. A poor onboarding expertise can result in a poor first impression. This might set the tone for future buyer assist.

Prospects who don’t obtain sufficient assist and have a poor first impression of you’ll be reluctant to belief you, growing ticket quantity and placing further pressure on inside groups. Measuring buyer satisfaction, ticket escalation quantity, and agent satisfaction throughout onboarding assist the method work successfully. 

Shopper onboarding satisfaction

In the course of the preliminary onboarding and early assist (the primary 90 days of the contract), use a shopper onboarding satisfaction survey to collect related satisfaction knowledge.

This survey ought to take a look at the shopper’s common satisfaction with the method as an general ranking and the probability they might suggest you (internet promoter rating). It also needs to take a look at how straightforward it’s to interact you for assist (buyer effort rating or CES), guaranteeing that new shoppers know the right way to acquire the assist they’ve contracted.

Ticket escalation (at onboarding) 

As soon as the brand new shopper is operational, measuring the ticket escalation quantity aptly signifies whether or not customary onboarding and problem decision practices are working for the shopper. Too many escalations can result in dissatisfaction later, so minimizing them is essential.

Ticket escalation is usually a easy quantity enabling MSPs to identify the overarching development or be measured as a proportion of the general tickets logged. The ratio is simpler to match throughout shoppers because the variety of tickets logged can range based mostly on the dimensions of the shopper’s footprint.

MSPs ought to benchmark the ticket escalation proportion general and by the shopper, documenting outcomes over time to see developments. MSPs can use the development knowledge to grasp the common proportion of escalations throughout early assist and ongoing assist.

This helps establish the tipping level at which shopper satisfaction begins to dip as escalations rise and deploy measures to routinely notify acceptable personnel when a shopper’s escalation price approaches the set threshold.

Agent satisfaction (at onboarding) 

Environment friendly shopper onboarding turns into essential throughout hyper development. The assist employees has to onboard a number of shoppers concurrently, which may overhwhelm them. 

An ideal onboarding expertise not solely drives shopper satisfaction but in addition agent satisfaction and prevents turnover. Measuring agent satisfaction throughout onboarding helps take away inefficiencies or bottlenecks and easily transition them to ongoing assist.

Take into account these components to enhance agent satisfaction:

• Bottlenecks between gross sales or contracting and the onboarding workforce and an absence of sufficient details about the brand new shopper and their contacts
• Lack of instruments or processes wanted to efficiently onboard the shopper, together with workflow administration options to control the method
• Inefficient discovery instruments or asset onboarding processes
• Use of handbook processes the place automation isn’t obtainable
• Further workload peaks attributable to hyper development

Be sure to interview assist brokers well timed to uncover these points, repair them promptly, and guarantee clean buyer onboarding.

KPIs round proactive IT administration 

Over the previous few years, growing IT points have added to technician stress. Decrease incident charges reduce stress for MSP technicians and enhance buyer satisfaction, making large-scale incident decision efforts a win-win.

Data-Tech Analysis Group states that 44% of enterprise leaders consider IT doesn’t have an operational technique that helps the enterprise, citing a failure to be proactive as one of many causes. When IT struggles on the operational degree, companies lose confidence of their capacity to execute strategically.

MSPs with a robust deal with incident prevention and proactively addressing points at scale provide shoppers the appropriate assist.

Incident prevention and issues resolved at scale

Incident avoidance entails two key facets:

• Shift-left alternatives, the place self-service permits clients to get the knowledge they want or repair widespread points instantly
• IT’s capacity to be proactive and scale operations

Issues resolved at scale symbolize the optimistic affect of proactive upkeep, repairs, and gear substitute earlier than failure. The metric tracks the variety of points resolved earlier than failure happens.

That is how MSP assist can excel over inside assist whereas stabilizing assist prices and taking some day-to-day strain off frontline brokers. 

To measure incident avoidance and drawback decision at scale, workflow administration programs ought to open tickets for detected issues and routinely present proactive resolutions. Most significantly, MSPs ought to commonly report incidents to shoppers to make sure well timed communication and determination.

KPIs to fight agent turnover

Hyper development, an ageing workforce, and quiet quitting enhance the demand for certified technical professionals, so stopping turnover is essential to MSP’s success. Technicians and frontline assist brokers are on the coronary heart of the MSP enterprise, however turnover and stress can not directly affect shopper satisfaction. 

Listed below are some components that have an effect on technician satisfaction:

• Lack of toolsets to carry out their jobs successfully
• Inconsistent assist insurance policies and procedures
• Extremely irritating operations 
• Lack of development alternatives
• Non-competitive wage and advantages packages

Technician job satisfaction 

Job satisfaction has been an trade bellwether metric of turnover. Conceptually, glad workers don’t depart. Glad workers additionally go the additional mile for the shopper, offering glorious customer support and making technician job satisfaction a essential KPI.

To shortly deal with and resolve job satisfaction points, conduct periodic in-depth surveys and complement them with instant-read surveys. An emoji-based one-question ballot carried out on the finish of the workweek can provide managers a fast overview to verify with the employees on how they’re doing. 

You want at the least two surveys to calculate technician job satisfaction and make them responsive sufficient to forestall turnover.

• Emoji-based “how was your week?” surveys present an instant-read that tells managers when to verify in.
• Longer, in-depth surveys measure satisfaction throughout widespread retention points: stress, workload, poor administration, inadequate development alternatives, not having the appropriate instruments to do the job, and so on. These present strategic course for longer-term enchancment alternatives.

Turnover charges  

Whether or not pure attrition or post-pandemic demand for brand new employees to switch ageing staff, IT is in a continuing expertise struggle. Sourcing and retaining the appropriate expertise is especially essential for MSPs throughout hyper development.

Turnover charges in customer support considerably affect the standard of buyer interactions. Excessive turnover charges can result in a better proportion of inexperienced brokers. Moreover, the lack of mentoring and steerage from skilled employees might result in poor service high quality.

Benchmarking turnover charges in opposition to satisfaction survey scores 

To cut back turnover, MSPs ought to know the satisfaction charges wanted to retain employees. This may be achieved by benchmarking turnover charges in opposition to satisfaction survey scores and appearing when scores begin to dip. 

These actions can embody workforce conferences to collect suggestions on instruments, administration, working situations, ache factors, and issues individuals love about their jobs. Observe every initiative to uncover alternatives for enchancment via common communication and motion plans.

Supply: ResearchGate

This graphic reveals the tipping level the place lowered satisfaction and elevated turnover meet. It is what organizations ought to search for and know to keep away from turnover. For this group, satisfaction scores of 9 or higher are wanted.

It is vital to establish components that have an effect on technicians’ day-to-day work.

• Ask for common suggestions to grasp what they like or don’t concerning the job
• Perceive the instruments they use and whether or not they’re useful or making the work extra difficult
• Guarantee shopper onboarding processes don’t hinder day by day operations
• Ask about enhancements technicians want to see with the job
• Search suggestions to enhance the assist course of

Additionally, take into account the optimistic affect of inside promotions. Offering totally different roles and technical assist tiers encourages sufficient development to retain individuals for longer. You may also give assist brokers further tasks to work on, like constructing information bases or serving to develop automated self-service instruments.

MSP KPIs are key to profitable operations throughout hyper development 

A number of components affect how efficiently MSPs function throughout hyper development. Together with a superb metrics program, the know-how used to assist shoppers and measure outcomes is essential. This impacts your onboarding new clients, understanding and sustaining their surroundings, retaining brokers, and reporting on MSP successes. 

When choosing know-how, MSPs ought to collect key workforce members and search for options comparable to:

• Customer support administration performance to handle the contracting section and gather shopper contact and assist data
• Sturdy discovery and asset administration capabilities to find belongings throughout the shopper’s surroundings, detect when unauthorized belongings attempt to join with their community, and when new, approved units are added
• Patch administration options with insurance policies to detect units which can be lacking patches or in any other case not complying with system requirements
• Safety vulnerability administration capabilities to scan the surroundings for identified vulnerabilities and anomalies that want consideration
• Synthetic intelligence and predictive capabilities to carry out automated fixes for identified points and supply a tool well being rating for opening and assigning tickets routinely to assist proactive system restore
• Distant monitoring and administration options to offer IT alerts and help with attended problem decision
• Agent dashboards to assist technicians decide the work to be executed and handle exceptions

As soon as brokers are armed, use the MSP KPIs to offer a dashboard view of their efficiency and outcomes.

As an MSP, you want extra than simply due diligence to drive buyer satisfaction and worker retention. Study how one can future-proof your MSP in seven easy methods and put together to raised meet the rising challenges.