As a UK IT Managed Service Provider, we manage various aspects of our customers’ IT environments. But what is it that keeps them coming back? What is it we do differently?
In a recent article, we discussed why a Managed Service Desk is crucial for businesses to flex with the market demand. In this article, we want to explain what makes a good managed service, and why our managed services customers come back to us, year after year.
To understand our points of differentiation, we spoke to Core Sales Manager, Mark Pembroke, to understand why our managed service portfolio grows year on year. As one of our leading Sales Managers and a Core veteran of 10 years, Mark has a deep insight into our customers’ pain points, and a solid understanding of what they want from a service.
The Managed Services arena is both busy and volatile. The UK has many Managed Service providers, therefore understanding why our customers come to us in the first place is the key to understanding why they stay. We found that customers seeking to move to another service provider, do so for a variety of reasons. But at the root of all the issues, lies the problem many of us face in everyday life.
The incumbent’s service has become stagnant; often lacking foresight, innovation or understanding the changing needs of the customer. This issue transcends the IT industry and resonates with many of us in many different fields. The deal is signed, the account is secure, and the service plods on with little to no enthusiasm. There seems to be no connection between the person that sold you the service, and the team who deliver the service. As a result, standards slip, your employees end up finding workarounds to IT issues because they have little to no faith in the service, and from there, it spirals – downwards.
Perhaps related to the often seen disconnect between sales and operations, businesses face a severe lack of proactive management, which results in a reactive service, in a world where businesses are reliant on IT and only being reactive is unacceptable.
It isn’t difficult to take a step back each month to analyse the volume of IT issues raised to identify where improvements need to be made. It isn’t hard to assess resolution times to understand if more resources need to be applied. Yet we know this doesn’t always happen. The problems are still out there. Perhaps these issues are striking a few familiar chords with you right now?
These issues, however, have a way of spiralling out of control. If your employees lack the faith in your IT Managed Service Provider to the point where they are seeking their own workarounds, the trust is gone. It’s time to try something else.
What is it that Core does differently?
In a busy marketplace, we face the same challenges as any other MSP in the market; resourcing, upskilling, customer satisfaction, the list goes on. However, we are always striving to be better.
- We ask the right questions of our customers, challenging them on their own environments to ensure we fully understand their needs and their current IT landscape.
- We take great pride in our technical ability; ten Microsoft Gold competencies and four silver are not easy to achieve, and they demonstrate the great commitment and investment in upskilling by our teams.
- Innovation. Because we understand our customer’s needs and maintain great communication and relationships with them, we are able to keep our customers up to date with emerging technologies, risks, trends, threats and opportunities, to make sure they stay one step ahead of their competition.
- CSI – Continual Service Improvement is, as the name suggests, continuous. Our Service Delivery Managers take pride in not only delivering monthly reports, but where possible, providing recommended actions to ease the workload.
Those are just a few of the things we do, not to be different, but because we believe that’s what is required of a great managed service provider. Under all those actions and traits, there is one other factor that runs through our business allowing us to deliver fantastic managed services; our culture. There is no disconnect between our teams. When our Sales team has spent weeks or months working with a customer to deliver a solution, our operations team are there supporting them. We believe this continuity is fundamental to avoiding disappointment, to avoid the slip of service levels, and we believe that’s why we enjoy long relationships with our customers.
If you would like to learn more about our Managed Services, click on the button below to see how we can make a difference to your organisation.
