NEWS: Global Mentoring Solutions is now part of the Sherweb family. Click here to read more about the acquisition.

What separates your MSP from all the other IT support companies out there today?  Let’s face reality and be honest with each other.  The days of offering remote monitoring, ticketing systems, backup solutions and the best engineers are long gone.

You need to look in the mirror and ask a brutal and tough question, what makes your firm truly unique?

One immediate and key differentiator can be a 24×7 MSP Help Desk.

I know many of you are going back and forth, lying awake at night considering offering an around-the-clock MSP Help Desk or even a help desk in general.  But what is really stopping you from taking the plunge?  For some of us it is the idea of putting trust in a vendor to take care of our client’s day-to-day support needs something that we took pride in and for others it may simply be a cost limitation. Here is a secret, a great help desk offering is a profit centre.

Besides making you money, a help desk has a marketing advantage!

Have you considered how many of your competitors are actually offering a fully staffed, 24 x 7 help desk?  Many are not even considering this and from a managed services marketing angle, this presents a huge opportunity to leap frog many of your competitors.  Create a gap between you, in the lead, and the rest of the pack trying to play catch up.

What can you do to share the news about your new around-the-clock MSP help desk?  I suggest a four-pronged approach with your MSP marketing and that you follow this approach for everything you do with your managed services marketing.

  • Attract new opportunities – a 24 x 7 help desk is NOT offered by the majority of the MSPs out there.  However, this will not last forever.  Strike while the iron is hot.  Submit press releases, write articles on the benefits of your offering, send out postcards, share articles on your MSP blog and promote via your social media networks.
  • Tell your existing clients – Your clients are always looking for new ways for you to WOW them.  I can hear it now, “our clients are not interested in a 24 x 7 help desk”.  This statement may be true, but when they need it at 2 AM when working on a tight deadline it is sure nice that you have it.  Offer it and blend it in to your existing MSP offerings.
  • Inform your entire vendor partner channel – Marketing your MSP to the vendor community is an often overlooked but critical component to any marketing strategy.  Let every one of your partner reps or channel managers know that you have a help desk that works around the clock.  What a great reason to touch base with your vendors and share some news.
  • Your staff – another often overlooked piece of your MSP marketing strategy is marketing to your staff.  Your team must be aware of the offering and have the tools to talk about it with their colleagues and the clients they take care of.

Help Desk services are a key differentiator in many markets.  We are in a perfect storm of opportunity for your MSP to step ahead of the pack and become the trusted technical advisor.  With all the chat about the cloud bending the ears of clients and the community, clients are still going to need help.  A robust and trustworthy help desk will set you apart and offer a truly of high value service.