Solving the Top Issues MSP IT Support Teams Face

For an MSP, choosing the right technical partner can enhance your success and improve business continuity.

It’s easy to lose sight of how big and agonizing a decision it is for organizations when selecting a managed service provider. It’s one of the most profound choices that a modern business will make as it hands management and security of IT networks and systems to a third party. So, as an MSP yourself, how do you inspire confidence in potential clients and maintain the trust of your existing ones? In an already crowded market, the answer has to be excellent customer service backed by bulletproof IT system reliability — the very things that your own clients strive for, and the exact reason they turn to you for support. It also means selecting a technical partner that is able to enhance your offering and understands your long-term business goals. One you can depend on in the same way your clients rely on you.

But MSPs often struggle in exactly the same ways as their clients when it comes to choosing the right solutions partner, and as a result, their IT teams face the same uphill struggle when prioritizing support-related queries and coping with day-to-day systems management. This article looks at a few of the most common day-to-day challenges encountered by IT teams within MSPs and explores some potential solutions.


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Why Tech Support is Crucial to the Overall User Experience

Post summary:

• What is tech support?
• Tech support vs customer support
• 7 tips for better tech support
• When your customers run into a problem with your product, they contact your support team.

But, not just regular support.

For “IT” related issues, they contact tech support.

Whether the problem is a “user” error, a bug or technical issue, it doesn’t matter to them, they just want it solved so they can continue with their workload.

If they can’t log in to your product? They contact tech support.

A feature or module isn’t working as it normally does? They contact tech support.

Therefore, any questions relating to the product (how to install it, how to configure, etc.) all need to be answered by technical expertise in order for your customers to get the best value out of your product.

If you don’t have a tech support team in place to answer these questions, then customers will eventually stop using your product. And this leads to higher churn rates.

Put simply, if you run a product based business, then technical support is crucial to your overall success.

Yet, there’s a challenge with tech support.

It’s expensive!

In fact, it’s 100x more expensive than self-service channels.

Each time you fail to solve a tech support question, you’re potentially throwing money away.

Worse of all, you risk losing customers.

This becomes even more significant if you run a subscription-based business where one customer can subscribe to tens or even hundreds of user licenses. Failing to deliver a good experience here can be very costly.

That’s why it’s essential to provide high quality tech support.

To help you and your team, we’ve created the ultimate guide to tech support.

In this guide, we’ll outline what tech support is, why you should care about it, and how it works – as well as hints and tips to help your business improve on the quality of tech support you provide.

Let’s dive right in!

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IT Support Basics: Back to the Basics in IT Support

IT support is a business function of all IT Departments, which ensures that the computer systems of that company are monitored and maintained. This could either be done by an internal IT Department or a third party managed service provider. An IT support managed service provider ensures that the networks of a business are operating according to the standards of the company.

The basic functions of an IT support team are:

• Installing computer software
• Configuring systems
• Monitoring systems to ensure that run as they should
• Maintaining networks and systems
• Replace parts
• Troubleshoot systems
• Diagnose problems and solve them
• Provide technical support and advice
• Set up user accounts
• Test, evaluate and upgrade systems to new technology
• Conduct safety checks

The above list is indicates just some of the services to expect from your IT support team. Frequently, companies do not have the bandwidth or resources to support all of their IT needs. As a result they will seek to outsource some or all of their responsibilities to an IT service provider. Traditionally, a contracted IT company in Boston will simply work when needed - clients will contact the vendor to perform necessary maintenance, including system updates, hardware repair, security checks, etc. With the help of the service provider, IT services can be made proactive instead of reactive. 

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