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for onboarding new customers 5 Best Practices enter ebook

Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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Page 1: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

for onboarding new customers

5BestPractices

enterebook

Page 2: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

2

You’ve just won a new customer. 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.

Page 3: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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.

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.

1PLAN AND

COMMUNICATE

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Page 4: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

Your first priority should be handling the smooth transition of IT support. For example, make sure 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.

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Page 5: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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.

22AUDIT ANDCATALOG

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Page 6: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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-to-understand 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.

33ASSESS AND

INFORM

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Page 7: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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, 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.

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Page 8: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

If you haven’t already, 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.

4DEPLOY ANDCONFIGURE

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Page 9: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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.

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Page 10: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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, and you do not. 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.

5REVIEW ANDSCHEDULE

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Page 11: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

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.

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Page 12: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

HOW SOLARWINDS N-ABLE CAN

HELP

SolarWinds N-able makes it easy to adopt best practices and grow your business with its award-winning N-central® RMM and service automation platform for customer onboarding

and much more. 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 N-able solutions to deliver scalable, flexible,

profitable managed services to over 100,000 SMBs worldwide.

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Page 13: Best Practices for onboarding new customerssecure.n-able.com/signup/asset/Onboarding_ebook.pdf · customer. The onboarding process is your first opportunity to impress that customer

© 2016 N-able Technologies ULC. All rights reserved.N-able Technologies ULC's trademarks, service marks, logos and copyrights are the

exclusive property of N-able Technologies ULC and its affiliates. All other trademarks or works mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and may be or are

intellectual property of their respective companies. N-able Technologies and SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC are not affiliated with any of the respective companies.

ABOUT SOLARWINDS N-ABLESolarWinds N-able is a leading global provider of complete IT management, automation and MSP business transformation solutions. The SolarWinds® N-able N-central® product is an award-winning RMM and MSP Service Automation Platform. SolarWinds N-able has a proven track record of helping MSPs standardize and automate the setup and delivery of IT services in order to achieve true scalability. The N-central platform is backed by comprehensive business enablement support services.

Thousands of MSPs use SolarWinds N-able solutions to deliver scalable, flexible, profitable managed services to over 100,000 SMBs worldwide. With offices in North America, the Netherlands and Australia, SolarWinds N-able is 100% channel-friendly and maintains strategic partnerships with Microsoft®, Intel®, IBM® and Cisco® among others. www.n-able.com.

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1 (613) 592-6676