As I’m sure you already know, the major telecoms are making a big push into the managed services space and are a potential threat in the SMB marketplace. I have personally already run across services being offered by Verizon and AT&T.
The folks at MSPMentor recently wrote a post on AT&T’s claims of having 100,000 small businesses using their computer support service, and based on the number and tone of the comments, this subject has touched a nerve with many managed service providers.
Like many of you, my initial reaction is to think that these lumbering giants won’t stand a chance against those of us providing excellent, personal customer service to our local smb customers. But a recent experience with Verizon is making me rethink my position.
Last week, before heading on a family vacation to Europe, I was trying to load an application I wanted to use on my trip onto my new Blackberry. For whatever reason, the application wasn’t running properly after installed. Since I was doing this at the end of the work day and didn’t want to bother anyone on my team for help, I called Verizon tech support for assistance, hoping to get my issue resolved, but also secretly hoping to have another poor service experience from a large company that is trying to enter my field so I could continue to make fun of them.
I was disappointed in the outcome.
First, the problem got resolved pretty efficiently – damn them!
Second, the Verizon support rep displayed the kind of service I’d love to think Everon delivers on every call – shit!
The Verizon rep didn’t take control of my computer like one of our engineers typically would, but she did efficiently navigate me through some options on my computer that allowed my to get the Blackberry application I wanted to run properly (it’s an app that has both a desktop and handheld component). After doing so, she said she wanted to give me a few hours to play with it and then check back with me to make sure I was satisfied with the results (wow!), and asked when she could call me back.
I told her I wouldn’t be available until 11pm or so as I was running some errands in preparation for my trip, to which she responded cheerfully, “No problem”.
This gal was not playing along!
At 11pm, the phone didn’t ring. A-ha! I had found the flaw in their service that would surely doom them – poor follow up.
Unfortunately, at 11:10pm the phone did ring, and the rep promptly apologized for being late, saying that she was tied up with another caller a little longer than expected but didn’t want to hand my case off to another rep because she wanted to see it through personally. She then asked about my travel plans (she remembered!) and wished me safe travels.
I offered her a job on the spot.
The net result of this experience is that I now think that the large telecoms are a bigger threat than I originally thought. My experience with them demonstrated that they have obviously invested a lot in their service systems. I have been a Verizon customer for over 13 continuous years now, and I don’t have any plans to move from them. This service experience makes me realize why.
Now, offering me support for a Blackberry application is obviously a far cry from managing a network.
Or is it?
It seems that fully half of everything SMB’s are using now is a hosted application or service of some kind, and that trend will continue to develop in the future. So how different does their service structure really have to be to do a good job with networks as well? Not much, I’m afraid.
Sure, to do managed services properly, they’ll have to set up proactive monitoring and resolution systems, but given all of the tools that are out there in the marketplace today and best practices that have been established, that’s really not that hard to do.
All of this poses the question: What do independent managed service providers need to do to survive?
I firmly believe that there will long be a place for a small, well run MSP in the competitive landsacape. But what exactly does “well run” mean, and what does today’s MSP have to do to get there?
Those are questions I’ll answer (from my perspective, of course) in my next few posts…
MRC
