Of Devils and Details
This is going to take a second, but bear with the following point and you’ll be able to see why your MSP business needs to pay attention to even the smallest aspects of operations. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details, and neglecting to follow through on even the most seemingly-inoffensive aspects of operation could fundamentally implode your business.
Benjamin Franklin, Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park and Chaos Theory
Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park to some degree demonstrates chaos theory, or “The Butterfly Effect.” Jeff’s character Malcolm only gives exposition for one aspect of this theory, but there’s a bit more to it. Without getting into the mathematics behind The Butterfly Effect, this refers to causality demonstrated through chaos theory, and revealed via a series of calculations called the Lorenz equations.
Basically, there’s a “causality” to everything. A butterfly flapping its wings could very literally cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet, and here’s how: the butterfly flaps its wings just in time to miss getting eaten by some spider, who then starves to death before it can procreate, restricting a series of caterpillars from having their population dwindled by natural local predators. Thus, a group of frogs has a great deal of food and can breed outside normal restrictions, causing a plague in a nearby town where government assistance is called to the fore, and a chemical is brought to bear on the situation which further damages the ecosystem of the region, eventually causing the forest to dry up, diverting ecological weather patterns, and making it so that traditional winds which would have started or restricted weather patterns across the globe are no longer in the equation. A hurricane results. This is basic cause and effect; a line of logical dominoes. Jeff Goldblum’s exposition of this concept in Jurassic Park doesn’t characterize the reality at all.
But here’s something else interesting: Benjamin Franklin was well aware of this causal nature to reality hundreds of years ago. He’s the one famously attributed to the proverb “for want of a nail.” Basically, a horseshoe doesn’t have a nail, so the horse is lost, the rider’s lost, the battle is lost, and then the kingdom follows soon after.
Attention to Detail
Do you see the application for your MSP business? Should you neglect the most minute aspects of an operation, they could domino into your company’s operational vehicle wobbling as the wheels begin to come off, and eventually crashing over the cliff of bankruptcy.
Tighten the Wheels of Customer Satisfaction
This is a concept more intuitive to some organizations than others. Of course, your customers should be satisfied— without customers, your business can’t operate! But many groups offering IT support can’t see the forest for the trees, as the saying goes. They get so caught up in the details of service delivery that they forget the satisfaction of the customer is important to operations, and so treat clients both harshly and brusquely. How many times have you seen the stereotype of some socially-awkward IT individual totally mistreating customers due to their lack of IT proficiency? These cats don’t know how to interact with normal people, as the stereotype says, and so they end up being incredibly rude.
To that end, you’ve got to do more than just hire individuals who are known to be trustworthy with customers, or focus on hiring such individuals. Get a normal staff of qualified, highly-trained personnel, and drill into them your vision of customer service. You’ve got to train them, manage them, and have some quotient of accountability brought to bear in addition.
Set an Example
But it doesn’t matter how good your MSP business is at training its employees in having apt customer service if you yourself don’t set a positive example. It’s like the authority figure who warns against vice, and then engages in it on a regular basis. Of course, those under their charge are going to pick up bad habits when times get tough— they’ve learned to vindicate such behavior subconsciously. Therefore, you must be a good example, and your tech people will follow suit.
