How to help make sure your clients trust your MSP business
For a managed services provider (MSP) business, building a great relationship with customers is the ultimate way to secure continued business and build your brand. Every strong customer relationship centers on one key concept: trust.
Without trustworthy correspondence between you and your customers, you can’t do much to prevent your end users from switching to another MSP team. Even if your IT management is top of the line, customers can easily become disheartened without reliable, trustworthy communication. Moreover, once you have established trust with your customers, you can build a positive relationship with your client base for years to come.
For MSPs, it isn’t always clear how to best gain the trust of clientele. You will need personable team members who know how to keep nonexperts in the loop about important IT matters. You’ll also need a rapid-response setup for potential security threats. Your biggest need, however, if you want to convince customers that you’re trustworthy, is a secure and reliable MSP software tool kit.
Understanding MSP businesses
Before we discuss cultivating a trustworthy client relationship, we should all be on the same page. If you’re just starting off with an MSP business venture, or if you have recently joined an existing one, you can benefit from learning exactly what MSPs are supposed to do (and not to do) in the realm of IT services.
MSP business operations aren’t always straightforward. In general, MSP companies offer security support for businesses looking for outsourced IT services sophisticated enough to manage a detailed security infrastructure. As an MSP, you might use a variety of software that helps you monitor and manage your customers’ servers. Typical duties of MSP companies include backup, network management, documentation, and password/credentials management.
Credential management is one of the most common services provided by MSP teams—and it’s also among those with the highest stakes. When businesses require a high level of password security—which may involve multiple tiers of privileged access—they often hire MSP specialists to implement and oversee credentials for their customers. Credential management software allows your MSP team to change passwords when necessary, set criteria for system access, establish and modify which accounts have privileged access, and more. For complete control over each customer’s credentials, your MSP control center will have access to a password vault with a bird’s-eye view of all relevant credentials.
Client trust: the key to MSP success?
With a clear understanding of your role as an MSP business, it becomes evident that trust is the key component of any MSP-customer relationship. Building a trustworthy reputation among customers is especially vital when it comes to credential management. When your MSP team has rapid access to thousands of passwords for each of your customers’ accounts and devices, trust is critical to ensuring satisfaction.
Once customers delegate their password information to your MSP team, you need to assure all end users that their sensitive information is in safe hands. Good communication helps your customers—who are unlikely to be IT experts—understand how their passwords are being managed and how to ask for help. Further, customers should be briefed on the many layers of defense against stolen passwords, and how you plan to prevent security compromises. Effective communication requires seamless logistics, reliable correspondence, and an intuitive, user-friendly customer interface.
However, strong, transparent communication isn’t the only component of a trustworthy MSP business. Trustworthy MSP businesses need a highly secure, efficient set of password management tools. When you combine sophisticated MSP software with effective end-user communication, you’re on your way to establishing a trustworthy managed services brand.
How to build trust with N-able
As an MSP, managing your customers' passwords means you may technically have access to more critical system information than any one person in any client’s organization. That’s a lot of responsibility—and you need to make sure that your clients trust you.
The N-able™ Passportal™ solution is the building block of a trustworthy password management system. With fast and effective credentials management and a secure, cloud-based vault for defense against hackers, N-able Passportal allows you to communicate with your clients clearly, change passwords quickly, and minimize the risk of cybersecurity threats.
Let’s look at some of the features that make Passportal the most trustworthy name in privileged password management.
• Secure encryption standards
To make sure your clients trust your MSP business, investing in a secure password manager is a great start. Passportal relies on highly encrypted password management software to protect end-user credentials and network management credentials from cyberattack—and prevent costly data losses.
So, how secure is Passportal? This password management tool uses AES-256 encryption to ensure your clients’ accounts remain safe and sound, barring access to all users outside of your MSP team. Every password you manage is encrypted in transit and at rest in a centralized, cloud-based vault. With six unique, randomly generated access keys, and more than 300 rounds of encryption when at rest, your clients can be certain their passwords are highly secure both in transit to the cloud and at rest in the vault.
• Granular access control
With Passportal, granular access control allows you to establish role-based permissions for unique end users. As with many businesses, your client’s team will likely consist of multiple roles that demand different levels of security access. For example, managers may need access to devices and passwords that associates do not.
With granular password management, your MSP team can set specific password complexity or length requirements for subsets of users with privileged access. These custom password policies can help you provide advanced security to customers who want to enforce the principle of least privilege. Passportal allows you to simply manage role-based permissions from one centralized dashboard.
• User-friendly reporting tools
With secure password encryption and granular access control, you can work to ensure that your customers’ credentials are safe and sound. But lasting client trust doesn’t just require comprehensive password protection—it also demands effective communication. With user-friendly reporting tools, Passportal allows you to effectively document your password security procedures for compliance purposes.
When it comes to client trust, exportable reports can help you demonstrate transparency among your MSP team. Exportable reports can also benefit internal purposes, such as assessing MSP performance, or when you need documentation for a security audit.
• Streamlined performance
To maintain a trustworthy relationship with your customers, your team needs to perform professionally and ensure high client satisfaction. If your clients are interacting with an MSP business that is slow to respond, difficult to communicate with, and confusing, you will be ill-equipped to cultivate a lasting relationship based on trust.
For an efficient and effective client relationship, Passportal offers a variety of features that can streamline your password management system. Automated password generation and deletion allows you to save time and energy with customized intervals for password rotation. You can easily access log data to view access history for clients’ devices, and document your workarounds in a user-friendly format. With highly efficient password management, you can establish a professional, trustworthy brand.
To ensure your clients are satisfied with your password management services, you need to be trustworthy. With Passportal, you can combine streamlined management with high-security encryption, granular access control, and user-friendly reporting to help you establish a trustworthy brand and lasting client relationships.
Investing in your MSP brand
Whether you’re just starting an MSP business or looking to more efficiently increase customer satisfaction, you’ve come to the right place. Passportal does more than just protect your clients’ sensitive credentials—it’s an investment in your brand. When your clients trust you with their IT services, you can establish strong, lasting relationships with every customer.
Firstly, trust allows you to establish a positive relationship, leading to engaged, satisfied clients who are inclined to use your MSP business more often and for more services. Positive relationships allow you to strengthen your brand, stand out among competing MSP businesses, and obtain new clients. What’s more, trust helps you build long-term relationships that add value to both your business and your clients’ businesses. By establishing consistently high client satisfaction and a strong brand, you can ensure your MSP business will thrive into the future and your customers will renew their contracts.
Passportal uses cloud-based technology to offer the ultimate solution to password management. With sophisticated encryption, streamlined services with automated password changes, and granular access control, this tool offers a complete, end-to-end password management system. Most important, however, it empowers you to establish yourself as an MSP business your clients can trust.
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