5 BEST PRACTICES FOR ONBOARDING NEW CUSTOMERS ENTER EBOOK

Transcription

1 5 BEST PRACTICES FOR ONBOARDING NEW CUSTOMERS ENTER EBOOK

2 YOU VE JUST WON A NEW CUSTOMER Introduction The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer with your thoroughness and professionalism. You can ensure onboarding is a positive experience for customers and for your team by following five best practices. 1. Plan and communicate 2. Audit and catalog 3. Assess and inform 4. Deploy and configure 5. Review and schedule 2

3 SET CLEAR EXPECTATIONS FOR YOUR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP Before you begin to take control of your customer s IT environment, develop a thorough plan to ensure your onboarding process is efficient and transparent. Customers need you to be clear about exactly what you ll do and when you ll do it. And your internal team needs you to clearly communicate what the customer is expecting. 1. Plan and communicate In some situations you may also need to convey to your customer s own IT representatives, through your behavior as much as what you say, that you re there to help them you re an extension of their team. 3

4 IMPRESS CUSTOMERS WITH A SEAMLESS TRANSITION Your first priority should be handling the smooth transition of IT support. A great starting point is ensuring that you or your customer retrieves necessary passwords and accounts from the outgoing support provider. A clean changing of the guard will stay in your customer s mind as an example of your effective planning and reliable execution. Blaming the outgoing provider for any problems left behind won t bring new solutions, only more problems. Do your best to ensure the transition is seamless and amicable. Plan and communicate 4

5 KICK OFF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH A THOROUGH, AUTOMATED AUDIT 2. Audit and catalog A complete audit of your new customer s environment shows thoroughness and good process on your part, not to mention genuine interest in their needs. While many MSPs still take a pen-and-paper approach to this project, working analog is time-consuming and can be disruptive for your client. Worse, it can also result in errors and incomplete information. For maximum speed and precision, use an automated auditing tool. This will reduce audit time from hours to minutes and let you easily generate an inventory report that conveys useful information to the customer. It may be the first complete audit report of their environment they ve ever seen. 5

6 USE REPORTS TO SET A BASELINE If you haven t already, consider investing in a reporting tool so you can begin showing value right out of the gate by providing proactive assessments even before you ve completed onboarding. Your customer will appreciate an easy-tounderstand view of their network and IT infrastructure, and this will be the baseline for assessing your value-add and for establishing SLAs to set expectations. 3. Assess and inform Your reports will also identify potential problem areas that your customer should address before onboarding is completed. This is your chance to shine. Walk the customer through their environment, point out anything you feel is out of place or in need of attention. It s usually best not to speak unkindly of the previous IT support company, but be sure to point out issues that might cause either your client downtime or your support team undue hours of challenging issues. Rank the issues in terms of criticality and ensure the customer understands the potential fallout from not addressing them to ensure you are covered should something fail under your watch. 6

7 SET UP AN RMM SOLUTION TO PROVIDE OUTSTANDING SERVICE 4. Deploy and configure Deploy a remote monitoring and management (RMM) software solution so you can remotely manage the customer environment easily on an ongoing basis. An RMM will allow you to install agents on each device and populate your monitoring system, handle the onboarding of all devices, assess the customer s IT environment, and give you the tools to manage patches, keep antivirus software up to date, run backups, and more in an automated, cost effective manner. 7

8 FIND AND RESOLVE RISKS USING YOUR RMM TOOL Deploy and configure With your RMM deployed, you ll be in the position to bring additional issues to your customer s attention. Fix as many of these as the customer is willing to fix to ensure you don t start your engagement dealing with the consequences of a previous MSP s messes. If you re concerned about the number and potential severity of legacy problems, define a baseline of what you can support and give the customer a plan for how they can scale up to those requirements. Customers typically understand that having a poor or non-existent backup and disaster recovery solution, or a lackluster AV and patch plan in place can leave their business open to significant risk; they will often be happy to work with you to solve these types of problems. Resolving their risks will also have the desirable side effect of increasing your ability to more easily support them. 8

9 MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE NO GRAY AREAS Once onboarding is complete, sit down with your customer and review what s been done and what, if anything, is outstanding. Based on deployment results, your SLAs may need adjustment. Make sure you leave no gray areas, such as unsupported hardware or software that could cause confusion or disagreements. Ensure you have a plan in place for unexpected costs and projects, but don t leave contractual holes that may put you in a position where the customer believes something is covered when it s not. 5. Review and schedule Starting on a solid, well defined foundation is in everyone s best interest. You may want to offer your managed customers discounted rates for project work to encourage more business and to establish goodwill. Many providers offer a sliding scale: the more project work you do, the better the hourly rates becomes over the course of a year. Finally, schedule your first quarterly business meeting, during which you ll present high-level graphical reports that demonstrate the services you re offering and their value to the customer s business. 9

10 How SolarWinds can help MSP SolarWinds MSP makes it easy to adopt best practices and grow your business with its award-winning MSP N-central RMM and service automation platform for customer onboarding and much more. MSP N-central has a proven record of helping MSPs standardize and automate the setup and delivery of IT services to achieve true scalability. Thousands of MSPs use SolarWinds MSP solutions to deliver scalable, flexible, profitable managed services to over 100,000 SMBs worldwide. 10

11 About SolarWindsMSP SolarWinds MSP empowers MSPs of every size and scale worldwide to create highly efficient and profitable businesses that drive a measurable competitive advantage. Integrated solutions including automation, security, and network and service management both on-premises and in the cloud, backed by actionable data insights, help MSPs get the job done easier and faster. SolarWinds MSP helps MSPs focus on what matters most meeting their SLAs and creating a profitable business. solarwindsmsp.com 2017 SolarWinds MSP Canada ULC and SolarWinds MSP UK Ltd. All Rights Reserved. RMEB00099EN1016