When consultants are looking to boost revenues – often the first thought that comes to mind is “How do I find new customers?”
Now, while finding new customers is critical to the growth and stability of any business, what consultants often fail to realize is that the fastest, easiest and greatest sources of added revenue can come from the clients they already have.
And one of the easiest ways to generate this increased revenue is by providing clients frequent communication through automated reports and alerts generated by your remote monitoring, asset management and ticketing systems.
Most, if not all of today’s applications popular with the IT community have full capabilities to alert system administrators (meaning you, and your client if you so desire) as to any issue that arises on the network.
When you properly use these systems to tell you and your clients when support is needed, you can instantly generate increased revenue that otherwise might have been missed.
- Alerts automatically delivered to the client when critical issues arise provide a highly-qualified message that support is needed. If a client receives a notification that the backup failed for example, you can be sure they’ll want to know how soon you’ll be working on the issue.
- Non-critical issue alerts that might not require immediate attention still draw the attention of the client and enforce continued communication with you, the consultant.
- Non-critical issue alerts can generate billable support, where before, without an alert from the server, the issue might not have been addressed because the client simply didn’t recognizable a negative impact on the network.
- Regular health status reports showing errors create a demand that service be performed. Clients will be expecting follow-up reports showing that the errors have been resolved
Automated reports also promote a need and desire to have you perform profitable upgrade and improvement projects
- Performing reviews of monthly inventory reports allow you to address potential deficiencies in the network and promote improvement projects
- When RMM alerts are delivered repeatedly for specific systems, they can indicate deficiencies within specific areas of the network, requiring upgrades or replacement projects
- Delivering service reports from your ticketing system that identify frequent service requests on specific problematic systems will identify areas in need of upgrades or improvements
One of the most important, measurable indicators of profitable clients is determining the lifetime value of the customer. The longer you retain a client, the more revenue they will generate, the more profitable that client will be for you – and the cheaper your marketing efforts become for acquiring that client.
If you want to retain clients longer, then first you need to ask yourself, “Why do clients leave?” The answer is generally:
- They aren’t confident in your ability to maintain the network
- They aren’t satisfied with your level of response or communication
- They don’t feel you’re providing value equal or greater than the dollar amount they’re paying you
How can automated reporting strengthen your ability in each of these areas?
- Daily, weekly or monthly server health status reports that show 100% positive health status enforces confidence in your ability to maintain a stable network
- Health status reports that show errors, which you promptly address and resolve maintain confidence in your level of response and capabilities in maintaining the network
- Automated alerts delivered in real-time via email continuously remind the client of the amount of attention required by the network – and keeps the client aware of how much you’re needed
- Even “safe-to-ignore” alerts serve as a regular reminder that you’re watching the network, and can prompt proactive maintenance to clear the errors
- Service reports delivered via email upon completion of ALL service calls (especially the proactive or remote support calls) will keep your client constantly informed and aware of all the work you do. Out of sight does NOT have to equal out of mind.
By fully utilizing the systems you probably already have in place to provide alerts and reports to enhance your communication with your client will boost their confidence in the reliability of their systems, boost their confidence in your ability to maintain the network and perhaps most importantly, boost your revenues.
