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5 ways MSPs can stop the madness and increase the happiness

There’s no doubt about it—no matter how hard you try, there’s always going to be someone who isn’t happy with the service you provided them. And the reality is that companies often rely on reviews and recommendations from others to make their buying decisions. So, whether the feedback is warranted or not, it’s critical to your company’s success to address and respond to negative feedback. With that in mind, here’s an overview on how to react and what you can do to reduce these types of reviews in the future.

Implement a response process

If you’re like most MSPs, you have a customer support team that handles all things related to your customers’ services—but are these staff members equipped to deal with complaints or worse, threats of cancellation because of an issue? If not, it’s high time to put a response process in place in which all members of your support team follow the same steps to handle any negative feedback.

A step-by-step process ensures that customers have an ear when they need to voice concerns and that something will be done to address it. Here’s an example:

1. Receive, find or seek out feedback

It’s never fun to hear what you’re doing wrong, but this information is crucial to your company’s success. So if you don’t have a feedback mechanism in place, get one. Give customers a chance to voice concerns, make complaints or offer constructive criticism. By doing so, you’re demonstrating how much you value your customer’s input and this will dissuade them from voicing negative comments publicly.

That being said, it’s also a good idea to put a team member in charge of scanning discussion boards and social media sites for negative commentary about your company. You could even set up Google alerts to get notified when you’re mentioned online so you can see both positive and negative mentions of your name. This gives you a chance to respond right at the source and shows other viewers that you are proactive and concerned.

2. Keep a record and rank all feedback

Create a customer feedback log or a database that your customer support team (and anyone else in the company) can see and review. Sort all feedback into different categories, from positive comments to mild, medium and strong complaints so you can see at a glance what is happening. Make sure to flag customers that are in danger of churning so you can address and follow up once a response has been given.

3. Assign responsibility for responses

Whether you’re receiving phone calls from angry customers whose service was down for two minutes last week or you’re hearing about negative comments on discussion boards, make sure you have a team member assigned to respond. You could have different people in charge of different types of complaints; just make sure there is protocol in place for how to respond.

4. Ramp up your response time

Although your SLA is important, when it comes to receiving negative feedback it’s time to ramp up your deadlines and get moving to ensure your churn rate doesn’t rise. Today’s customers expect immediate attention, especially when they’re angry or are having an issue. Remember, customers do not want to hear that you’re busy helping other customers—to them, their issue is the most important.

5. Improve your service level

If you’re receiving negative feedback on a consistent basis, it’s time to review your customer service practices and look at what areas need improvement. An important factor to consider is how engaged your team members are and how well they are delivering your service. Remember, in order to be successful, team members need to have measurable goals (decreased response times and decreased customer complaints, for example) and need to be recognized and rewarded for achieving those goals.

Implementing our online employee recognition program is one way many MSPs are seeing improvements in their customer service and ultimately, customer satisfaction rates. With crewHu, you can get the whole team involved by setting goals, measuring and tracking their performance and rewarding them with meaningful prizes. Get a free trial to learn firsthand exactly how CrewHu can help you.