From Service Provider to Service Partner: Building your Business by Adding Value to Customer Relationships

Bits & Bytes - The BitTitan Blog for Service Providers

18/03/2021

by Liz Behlke

A fundamental rule of business is that it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. As a technology service provider, a loyal customer base is golden in many ways: These customers are more likely to buy from you again and more likely to recommend your services. It’s simply easier to build a sustainable business if you think of yourself as a service partner rather than a service provider.

 

When you’re a service partner, customers come to you first for technology assistance. More importantly, they expect you to come to them with solutions for increased efficiency and digital enhancements. As a trusted advisor, you’re building long-term relationships with customers who wouldn’t think of taking their business elsewhere.

MSPs have seen time and again how MigrationWiz is the start of long and mutually satisfying customer relationships. Let’s take a look at the why and how.

Don’t stop at one project

It takes a change in mindset to go from project work to becoming a service partner. To start with, existing customers need to be your primary focus of business development. Everyone you’ve served successfully should be part of your customer list. And any time you acquire new business, even for a single project, you should assume that they could very well be a customer for the long term.

These relationships start, of course, with providing the very best service and value – always delivering on what you promise. It’s also vital to truly understand your customers on both a human and technology level. That’s part of building trust and it lays the foundation for recommending future services.

When you see every project as an opportunity to build long-term customer relationships, you’ll reap the rewards in sustainability and profit. Your efforts to acquire new customers become super-charged when your existing customers advocate for you or take you along to their next job.

If building long-term customer relationships sounds like your kind of business strategy, BitTitan has proven solutions that you can implement as part of your regular service offerings. Many of our MSP Partners have customers who’ve been with them for years, who rely on them for ongoing technology solutions. Often these relationships started with a single migration project.

From migration to long-term partnership

It’s no secret that if you do good work, you’re more likely to be first in line for another project. The mistake many MSPs make is waiting for those projects to come to them. At BitTitan we’ve seen how a proactive approach – starting with your very first project – builds customer relationships and solidifies your position as an indispensable technology partner. Let’s take a look at how this works:

  1. Make your mark with migrations – Cloud and tenant-to-tenant migrations are accelerating. You could keep your team busy just moving from project to project. But a migration can also kick off a solid long-term customer relationship. When you use MigrationWiz to execute a fast, seamless migration, it’s an opportunity to get to know your customer and show off your high-quality work.
  2. Tap into customer needs – MigrationWiz is a window into your customer’s technology infrastructure. When you plan and implement a migration, it’s an opportunity to identify other ways to support them. This is also a time for getting to know the work style and personality of your customer to discover the best way for making additional recommendations.
  3. Add value with assessments – BitTitan Voleer now has assessments that you can add in to your migration project plan. This includes pre-assessments for scoping and pricing the project, and post-migration assessments to identify any issues with the new environment. These assessments not only enhance your team’s professionalism and save you time, they produce clear and logical reports you can share with your customer.
  4. Deliver ongoing reports – Once you’ve gotten to know your customer and their environment, you can set up assessments that provide automated reports on their schedule. When you analyze these assessments alongside your customer, you’ll be able to identify additional ways to support their environment. This strategy can literally pay off, since your single Voleer subscription allows you to run assessments for all your customers – and you decide whether to price the added services as a package or a line item.
  5. Always be there – Keep in mind, if they’re doing their jobs, your competitors are always knocking on your customer’s door. Customers will be inclined to stick with who they know, but they may also be tempted by interesting new solutions. Don’t be invisible – make a plan to bring your customers recommendations on a regular basis so you’re always top of mind. Voleer assessments are the key to customising your solutions.

 

MigrationWiz and Voleer – a winning combo

MigrationWiz is more than an efficient migration tool. It can be the key that opens the door to long-term customer relationships and recurring revenue. Once you’ve used MigrationWiz, it will become your team’s go-to solution for every migration scenario – no need to learn multiple tools. That translates into more time to consult and deliver additional services.

Add Voleer to the package, and this is when you go from service provider to service partner – guiding customers using transparent assessments that help them optimise their infrastructure. It truly is a win-win. Customers have a trusted advisor monitoring and taking care of their business; you create a structure for recurring revenue and proactive project discussions.

 

Designed for your success

At BitTitan, we’re driven to assure our Partners’ success. We’re here to help you maximize every customer relationship, and MigrationWiz is just the start. Long-term relationships are important to us, too. That’s why we offer support when and how you need it.

If you’re new to migrations, you can access our extensive resource center with articles, education, and webinars. Our customer support team is there to help with any questions or guidance. We can also provide assistance to help you plan a migration project, structure your pricing to balance competitiveness and profitability, and identify sources of recurring revenue.

Contact us today to learn more about building your business with BitTitan.

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