Are Your Customer QBR’s Happening?

A QBR or Quarterly Business Review is a scheduled quarterly meeting with your managed customers to provide an overview of their business technology health, to assess any current issues, as well as plan for any future expenditures or needs. The biggest problem for many MSP practices is that QBR’s are just not happening.

There are a number of reasons that a QBR doesn’t happen and things you can do to make sure they do:

Customer is unavailable

Try scheduling the meetings in advance, for instance at the end of the previous meeting, schedule the next one on the spot with the customer and send a meeting invite assuring it is in both calendars. Though this is not a guarantee that the meeting will occur there is higher likelihood of availability.

Customer Tunes Out

Often times when a meeting occurs it is difficult to keep the customer focused or engaged. This is generally contributed to the format of the QBR itself. Many MSP’s utilize long, data driven reports in an attempt to show value to the customer. Some MSP’s just read this information page by page to the customer, providing no interaction or interest. Though it is a good idea to have a deliverable, instead create an agenda to go over and highlight concerns, specific accomplishments, and future needs/budget.

You Don’t Have Time

This is probably the one we hear most often and usually just means you don’t want to. It is more than important to create and maintain your customer relationships and a QBR is a great way to do that. It may not be necessary to have these meetings quarterly with every customer but making sure there is a recurring meeting is necessary. Make the time!

Always Bring a Token of Gratitude

Going to a customer’s office with a small token of appreciation like donuts, coffee, smoothies, or lunch can create an event that the entire office looks forward to. This can help to build the relationship as well as assure a customer’s availability. If calling to set a meeting, mention that you would like to bring the office one of these tokens and come by for your quarterly sit down. Mentioning this can also help to gain the meeting.

It is easy for MSP’s to get comfortable once they have a contract or long term agreement. The reality is they should always be working to build the relationship, maintain the agreement, and build customer loyalty. By providing regular QBR’s all of these can be accomplished and so much more!

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com

The Cloud is Flexible!

At ExchangeDefender, the Cloud is Flexible!

Many clients are sometimes reluctant to commit to contracts and quotas because there is uncertainty about where their business may be headed in the months and years to come. Will their business grow and need more employees and thus more licenses, or will they go through hard times and need to reduce their number of employees, thus needing fewer licenses?

An advantage to the cloud and hosting with ExchangeDefender is that we are extremely flexible with you and your clients’ needs. As your client grows, new accounts can be added, and if your accounts were to shrink, old accounts can be deleted without any hassles. This helps to minimize the risk of wasted resources on both parties and also takes away large upfront costs or charges along the way. A great benefit of working with ExchangeDefender is that we offer partners to add accounts with no minimums or quotas to fill. Also, there are no contracts to sign or hoops to jump thorough in order to get your services up and running, just a flat month-to-month service which frees up you, the partner, and also your client, the end user. Another benefit to the partner is that we offer volume discounts so that you have more leverage in working with your clients to get them the very best service at the very best price and making you the most profits!

Make Your Clients Think!

“Knowledge is in the eye of the beholder.” “Seek and you shall find!” There is so much truth in these popular quotes. People can find out a lot by actually looking for answers by asking questions. So, you need to ask the right questions!

You, the MSP, need to help your client understand the cloud and how it can benefit them. Our job at ExchangeDefender is to help you provide world-class cloud solutions to your clients. You can help your clients understand the questions that they need to ask and advise them on how to think of the cloud from a management standpoint to feature benefits, SLA’s to security, migration to deployment, etc. Take time to ask the right questions and start talking about the cloud with your clients.

As always, please let us know if there is anything that we can do to help!

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

If It’s Not Written Down, It Never Happened…

Over the past week, I have been in documentation mode. Recently, we released a major update to Shockey Monkey. On top of that, over the past two weeks we have been debugging the entire platform. With all the updates and changes, it was time to revise the all the documentation associated with the entire platform. This included Help Guides, How-To documents, White Papers, etc. Not to mention, we felt it was time to reorganize all this literature. So needless to say, it has been a busy two weeks. This got me thinking about when I ran my businesses and how it was vital to document everything within them. Hopefully, you are doing the same in your business.

In Customer Service and Support, documentation couldn’t be more important. Keeping up with your clients is a vital part of letting them know that you care about their business. Detailed documentation of support issues not only helps you remember who the issue was remedied, but it will help others that work with and for you. There is no sense in trying to remember a fix or when the last time you called a client to check on them. Half the time, we leave the house every morning forgetting something at home.

There is a saying around the office: If it’s not documented, it never happened. At this point, I am not concerned with how you are documenting, so long as you are documenting. Get into the habit of writing or typing in detailed information about your support fixes or customer touches. After that, work on a way to organize those notes. There are no less than two-dozen books on the very subject of organization. However, if you are looking for a free customer service and support management platform to help you out, call me up. I know a guy!

Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707

Bug Squashing–Developer’s Journal

Over the course of the last few months we have published a significant amount of new features into Shockey Monkey. However, these last few weeks we have been focused on fixing some outstanding bugs within our software. With the introduction of our guided setup coming soon, we are trying to assure that we eliminate all of the bugs that have a huge impact on your ability to run your business.

Here are some of the bugs that were addressed over the last few weeks:

Administrators cannot approve/deny time sheets or time off requests.

This has been fixed – Not only can administrator’s change the status on these requests, but employees can now see that status when they view their request.

Employees were able to see the Corporate tab, when they did not have administrative privileges.

This has been fixed – While they could see the tab, they did not have the ability to view/edit any information contained within this section. However, we have fixed the issue that was allowed them to view this section.

When creating an employee for the first time the access level was not being applied to the account. It would require an edit/save, for the access level to take place.

This has been fixed – Now when an employee is created, the access level is applied instantly.

Within the contact/company section when trying to use the lookup feature you would be presented with a 404 popup.

This has been resolved.

Multiple issues with the Documents section within the portal.

We have fixed these issues and made some visual improvements to this section.

Issues with Settings > Experimental Features, which would not allow clients to close a ticket.

This has been resolved.

Links have been added back to the dashboard.

The agreement section had several issues, which have been addressed.

Administrators/Employees can no longer remove themselves from the system.

This fixes an issue where users would remove the last administrator from the portal “themselves”, thus locking themselves out of their portal.

The SLA System, has received a major rewrite and now functions as intended.

The project section had several bugs, which were limiting the functionality of this section.

This section is due for an update both visually and functionality wise, look forward to this in an upcoming release.

Upon having a ticket assigned to an employee, they would receive an empty email.

This has been resolved; information is now contained within these emails.

There was a bug that would cause ticket rendering to become jumbled, upon adding an internal note.

This has been resolved.

Next week, we should have a very exciting addition to Shockey Monkey! Make sure to check back next week, you don’t want to miss this new feature. I will say that it is something that has been requested for quite some time now.

Hank Newman
VP, Development
hank@ownwebnow.com

Is Your Business on Autopilot?

The notion of a self sustaining, self running business is a goal for many business owners. Hiring the right staff, delegating responsibilities, and putting processes in to place can often times allow businesses to achieve this goal. However, though this goal is obtainable, a business on autopilot is just going through the motions, and though it may be able to maintain and land, it surely will not be able to take off.

The job of the business owner or CEO is an important one. It is a leadership role and is a position of authority, inspiration, and motivation. Great leaders inspire their staff and those around them. This comes in always innovating, bringing new solutions to the company, and a relentless passion for the business.

Of course there is a fine line between a dictator and a democratic leader. The key to drawing this line is to take all of those features in an autopilot business; hiring the right staff, delegating responsibilities, and putting processes in to place, and combine them with the leadership qualities mentioned above for the business owner.

This combination is what makes a great company and can allow for growth in the business. For some this is the hardest part. Business owners can have a hard time delegating responsibilities. Often times stating that they have been “burned” by a past employee or saying “it won’t get done the way they want it to.” This mindset of course limits growth and puts an immense amount of pressure on the business owner.

An IT business is not one that will allow a CEO or business owner to run the business on autopilot. It is important to take time off, enjoy life, and be there for your family. But, as the leader of an organization, it is just as important to stay on top of trends, continue industry education, inspire and motivate employees, and continue to drive the business forward.

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com

Spice Up Your Business Facebook Page

Nowadays social media is something that virtually everyone is a part of, a way to stay connected to friends and colleagues, and a way to have the world at your fingertips. Of all the social media networks in cyberspace Facebook is clearly the most popular.

Many businesses have turned to Facebook pages as a vital marketing avenue and you can/should too. Having a Facebook page for your company can be an enormous business asset. Given that the number of people that are currently using and engaging in social media, the potential of Facebook is limitless and if utilized correctly can be immensely profitable for you and your business. By simply following these suggestions below to “spice up” your Facebook page, you can set yourself apart.

3 Simple Suggestions to Follow:

1. Give Brand a Personality – Business is about being known, and about being known for a purpose. Ask yourself these questions:

-“What sets you apart from your competition?”

-“How do your represent your business?”

– “How do your customers view you?”

It is very important for you to decide on the brand image that you want to portray to your clients and stay consistent with it. Consistency instills loyalty, and loyalty is a great trait to have associated with your brand and is definitely something that customers look for.

2. Frequently Update Your Page – If a potential client were to visit your page and see that it has not been updated in a while it could give off negative thoughts of abandonment, forgetfulness, or disconnectedness. Those are things that you do not want to be associated with or have others think that your business is. To avoid that, update your page regularly. It can be something simple like what is going on in the industry, what you are doing, a promotion that you are running, blog post, new service offering, etc. However, you will want to stay away from bashing your competitors, or posting anything negative, because this ultimately creates a bad impression on you and you always want to shine a positive light on your business. Make it worth the while to come back to your page. Offer visitors something in exchange for becoming a “fan” of your business page like discounts, or special offers. Adding incentives to becoming a fan or to “like” your page will add leverage to your efforts and the likelihood that more visitors will become fans will increase over time.

3. Make Your Page Interactive – Make your page more exciting by adding a bit of interaction to it. Have giveaways, hold contests, include pictures, videos, and links that will engage visitors and make them want to come back again to see what your business is up to. Another way to make your page interactive and to get your visitors involved is to encourage them to engage in conversation. Making your page more interactive will give it a whole new look and feel.  When posting status updates, try ending with a question. This will spur action in your fans. In some cases you can even add your own comment to get the ball rolling a bit. Also comment on their posts so that they will return to your page when reading previous posts. Encourage fans to keep coming back to your page to add their own comments and ask questions. Do your best to respond to your fans comments and questions as soon as possible, this will show them that you are in tune with your customer base and that you are reliable.

In the end, by continuously following these simple suggestions to “spice up” your business’s Facebook page, you will be able to increase the number of fans while you establish a lasting brand, build credibility, and of course effectively use your Facebook page for advertising and marketing purposes.

“Like” us on Facebook!!! https://www.facebook.com/ExchangeDefender

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

Jogging Towards Success

For better cardiovascular health, I very recently start jogging again. I say “again,” because I have tried numerous times over the years to establish myself as a jogger or runner, but I never turned into one. Looking back, I realize that this was simply because I never fully gave the exercise a fighting chance. I would experience pain such as shin splits and sore muscles. My rib cage would feel like it was about to burst out of my chest.  And then I, your brain, would save us by yelling, “Dude, this is why we bought a car!”

By listening to every muscle in my body telling me this exercise was hurting more than helping, I would quit. As the expression goes, “I couldn’t see the forest through the trees…” Yes, my body was hurting. Yes, my lungs were gasping for air; and yes, my heart was in the red. But isn’t this the definition of exercise? From my couch potato point of view, I just decided to go for a jog. “Hurting? We were about to DIE!!”

One of the problems I was facing was that I didn’t fully and clearly define what I was about to do: Exercise. Call it lifting weights, call it Zumba, or call it jogging. It all boils down to you getting off your butt and moving around vigorously—which if you are not use to it, hurts. Even if you are use to it, exercise can still be painful. But hopefully by that time, you would have comes to terms with the bigger picture (remember trees and forest; short-term pain, long-term health.) Screw the trees. Screw the forest. Flatten it all and put up a McDonalds!

Secondly, I never set any reasonable or measurable goals for my “new hobby.” By not setting any goals, I couldn’t measure any progress I may or may not have been achieving. I would simply quit, stating I wasn’t seeing any results. What results??? I never set any goals to see results. I just got into my head that I wanted to start jogging. I didn’t prepare my mind and my body for the effects that jogging would initially have on them both. I didn’t notify them both of the risk, i.e. pain associated with exercising. “What pain? We use to run all the time… when we were 12 years old…”

Lastly, I didn’t fully evaluate my findings. Yes, I glossed over the obvious pain and determined I was too out of shape to jog. However, if I stopped and truly evaluated what was happening to my body, I would have come to the logically conclusion that this pain is normal for someone who is sorely out of shape—both physically and mentally. I allowed my body to convince my brain that I wasn’t a jogger. Because logic dictates that if joggers felt this way, they wouldn’t do it either. “No matter, you’re more of a thinker anyway. And besides, we have a car, remember?”

So why is this story about jogging on a business blog?

Trees and forest, trees and forest. Remember, without trees there would be no forests. What were the trees of this story? Did you pick up on them as you were reading? If not, here is what you should be doing in your business (and personal life as well):

-Clearly define your realistic expectations and actions;

-Set reasonable and measureable goals

-Identify risks

-Evaluate decisions

Notice I am using words like realistic and reasonable. Don’t get me wrong; there are times to dream big. But you have to crawl before you walk—and you have to walk before you run.

Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707

We Hear You (Part 2)

To continue from my blog post from last week, another pain point has been the inability of a thread to stay whitelisted. If you’ve brought this issue to us in the past you’re familiar with the explanation. The way our technology works is we insert a hashed message thread ID into all outbound messages, and if we find a match upon return it passes whitelisted. This worked well for a long time. Against technology is our best friend and our worst enemy. The increased adoption of “privacy” appliances and application” and Exchange header size limits basically made this solution inconsistent.

Exchange has a header size limit that can be adjusted, this setting basically starts stripping non-essential (non exchange header inserts) items, so what we found is after a few replies to a thread, our keys would get pushed out. As far as privacy appliances go, they basically clean headers every time so those would fail a lot faster and quickly.

We had to pull out the big guns and pull Vlad out of code retirement for this one. The new whitelisting engine works similar to a standard address based whitelist that doesn’t relay on an element we can’t control (headers). We’re still working on it but the bulk of it is live and you really should see a decrease in complaints from there as well.

Next week, we’ll look at spam engine rewrites that will knock your socks off! Well unless you’re the guy that thinks getting 2 pieces of SPAM that you signed up for or whitelisted in day means getting SLAMMED!

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737

Shockey Monkey – Developer’s Journal

Shockey Monkey has been our major (development) focus over the course of Q1. We have found this experience to be very challenge, while also being very rewarding. The biggest challenge has been standardizing code throughout the portal. Some of these standardizations include areas of focus such as: (structure, formats, error handling, and security).

Why is this important?
This is important as we move forward, to help achieve a rapid development environment. We’ve actually been doing this gradually over the last few years and the process is becoming easier and easier. We have already seen the benefits of this design method, as you will see from the content and enhancements that have been produced in only a couple of months. This will also play a huge role when we push further towards internationalization of Shockey Monkey.

So what’s new?

Ticket Dispatch

This feature allows you to schedule technicians to a service ticket. You can have one or multiple employees assigned to a ticket and it will appear on their calendar.

Schedule Control

Every employee has a personal calendar that they can: (use, modify and share) and link into service tickets, to help keep them on track of their daily assignments. The schedule component is also HTML5 compatible, so it can be accessed directly from any HTML5 compatible smartphone.

Vendor Management

This allows you to keep track of your 3^rd party companies. You can manage things like (documents, address information, primary contacts, sensitive information, etc.). It centralizes all of this information for easy access and management.

Career Management

This allows you to keep track of your employees (achievements, goals and reprimands).

Service Boards

This is by far one of the best features in my opinion. It allows you to configure (private & public) service boards for use within your portal. Public boards are presented to users when they open a ticket, things such as (support, billing, and sales). While private boards give your employees a way to sort & manage all the internal workings of the company.

Theme-able!

Yes, Shockey Monkey is once again theme-able. Taking advantage of Jquery UI theme packs and standardizing all of our (tables, divs, controls, elements), themes are now easily applied and have a consistent look between browsing platforms.

Experimental Features

This section has been expanded to allows up to give you immediate access to feature requests that you may want, however don’t really fit anywhere inside of the portal quite yet. Check it out periodically; we have already added 5 options to this section.

Hank Newman
VP, Development
hank@ownwebnow.com

Keeping a Close Eye on the Competition

For many IT companies and MSP’s, competition can be a big threat to business and bottom line revenues. Local competition in some areas can be so fierce, that strong territorial lines are drawn and owner wars are waged. These may be extreme cases but the threat of competition and an ultimate plan of offense and defense should be in every business owner’s strategy.

The more information that you can gather about your competition, the better; some things you will want to know:

*Hourly Rates

*How Managed Services are priced (Flat Rate, Per Seat, Block Time)

*Estimated Number of Employees

*Years in Business

*RMM and Ticketing Platform Used

*Solution Stack and Product Portfolio

*Certifications Held

Most of these can be found by doing some Internet research and checking the competition’s website. By gathering the above information, you can provide sales staff a solid foundation for combating potential competitive objections, you can gear marketing efforts towards products or solutions your competition doesn’t have, and most of all you will know a lot more about your competition than you do now.

Local competition is one thing but in the managed services world, national competition is becoming a really big threat for some. Large national companies are buying up MSP’s, cloud services, and remote monitoring companies in an effort to manage your customers. This threat may be even more severe than local competition in that these large corporations have big money behind them, large sales teams, and a drive to penetrate the space.

Many of these companies have trusted brand names and are easily given opportunities to speak directly with customers. These threats must be treated in a similar manner as local competition. It is important to gather as much information as possible about potential national companies that may be trying to move in on your market.

As much as information gathering is important the most important part of any competition defense is offense. It is imperative that you meet with and speak with your customers regularly. Building loyalty and making sure your customers know about the competition and the differences in what you provide, is another critical part of a good offense. Market yourself as the local hands-on service with a smile company to combat national faceless competition, and be on the constant lookout for potential threats moving in on your business. By having as much information as possible and creating an actionable plan to deal with competition, you will be much more likely to come out on the winning side of any competitive situation.

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com