Does your MSP have a culture of "whatever it takes to keep our clients happy?"

Last Updated on February 7, 2025 9:35 am

A culture of "do whatever makes technology easy for clients" would be a powerful retention weapon within your MSP... do you agree?

You see that photo up there? That was the delicious feast waiting for me at a new cafe I went to last week.

It was inside a meeting venue in central London. I'd been meeting a few cool people there. And we were delighted to discover the in-house cafe was serving real food, not just crusty sandwiches.

Plus the food was subsidised and super cheap. A hot meal for £5, which is about $6.20. A bargain!

The only problem was the complete lack of flexibility demonstrated by the staff. They would only sell the set meals on the menu.

Here's how my ordering experience went...

Me: Hey, can I have a jacket potato with just cheese please.
Server: That comes with cheese and beans.
Me: I don't want the beans, can I just have cheese please.
Server: No beans?
Me: No beans.
Server: But it comes with beans.
Me: I don't like them. Just cheese please <pauses a beat and spots the broccoli> Oh, can I swap my beans for broccoli.
Server: No, sorry, it's only cheese and beans.
Me: <genuinely astonished> Ummm... I can't have broccoli?
Server: No.
Me: Can I pay extra for broccoli? It looks delicious.
Server: No, just cheese and beans.
Me: Really?
Server: It's our policy. You get some side salad but not broccoli.
Me: What about if I don't have beans and don't have salad, but have broccoli instead?
Server: No.... no, we can't do that.
Me: Really? But you'll make more money on the meal. Let me pay extra, I'd like broccoli.
Server: If you want broccoli you'll need to order a meal that comes with vegetables. Jacket potatoes come with cheese and beans.
Me: <becomes aware of the growing resentment of the long queue behind> OK. Just the potato and cheese then please <looks sad, and makes a mental note to buy broccoli on the way home>.

And I haven't exaggerated that, I promise!

My gut feel is the server showed a completely lack of flexibility because of the culture of that cafe. Maybe their whole day is geared around efficiently serving the hundreds of people having meetings at the venue. So somewhere along the line they developed a policy of never deviating off the menu.

Which makes sense for an efficient process. But surely the staff should be given the initiative to do something as simple as swap one side dish for another... right?

In my business, the MSP Marketing Edge, we have a culture of do whatever makes marketing easy for members.

This drives EVERYTHING we do. And it means my team rarely need to check in with me if a member asks for something that's a little off-piste. If they can help and it makes marketing easy for someone... they just do it. They use their initiative.

We make this our culture, our mission, by keeping it alive and feeding it every day.

A culture doesn't come from putting up signs on the office walls telling your staff how to behave. It doesn't come from Standard Operating Procedures. It doesn't come from what's "obvious" to you as the owner.

(side note - what's obvious to us as business owners is rarely obvious to our team... if we don't tell them exactly what we want and why, they are constantly trying to GUESS what we want and give it to us. This is a huge source of stress to staff!)

A culture needs to be alive and nurtured every day.

Every conversation we have internally... every meeting... every project... we openly talk about our mission. And remind ourselves that everything we do is aimed at making marketing easy for MSPs.

Because the more we do that, the more MSPs will join us. And the more successful we will all be, together.

High five.

Which leads to an interesting question for you...

Do your technicians have the power to use their initiative? More importantly, do they KNOW they have that power?

Flexibility and initiative needs to be a culture within an MSP, not a policy. I know there's a fine line between what clients think you should be doing for them, and what you actually do. And expectation setting is a huge thing for you.

But a culture of do whatever makes technology easy for clients would be a powerful retention weapon within your MSP... do you agree?