An effective MSP company understands personalities will not be uniformly represented by clientele. You’ll have diverse types in concentrations that ebb and flow as your MSP grows. Accordingly, how you deal with them must differ, too. Take Bruce Lee’s advice. Water fits into any shape into which it is poured–that’s an over-simplification, but the takeaway from Bruce was that you need to “be water, my friend.” You need to become the “shape” of your circumstances.
Your customer service needs to, like water, conform to the shape of client personality types. There is no end of diverse personalities. Several primary categories tend to sum them up, and following are strategies to help you manage them:
Dominant Personalities: Submissive Evidence
Your MSP company will run into those clients who want what they want, and they want it now, and they will not rest until objective X has been accomplished to several decimal places. The problem is, they may not truly understand what they are demanding or they may be making errors in operation themselves.
Here is how you deal with someone initiating such a harangue: submit evidence, and be submissive. That is to say: you allow them to assume the role of authority and let them feel they have the higher ground, then communicate evidence for or against what they are talking about. What you’re doing is showing that you and your MSP do not represent the impediment. Unless, of course, you’ve made a mistake; in which case you want to fix it quickly!
Influential Individuals: Listen and Communicate
Influential individuals are going to be pervasive, and they’re going to come at you hard. You’ve got to listen, because they may just try and trip you up. An influential personality type can be sly, and may even be able to acquire services from you which don’t necessarily match reasonable provision. You’ve got to listen very closely, and communicate. Sometimes a succinct and solid explanation swiftly delivered when a proper break in the conversation comes can abridge their tirade and make progress. Listen, and communicate, when you’re dealing with the influential types.
Conscientious Types: Agree with Them
A conscientious individual will come across as friendly and perhaps humble, but they’re going to steadily batter you through social niceties. Think of a high society Englishman, as opposed to a brash US southerner–to get a metaphorical idea. For these types, find ways to help them save face and to compliment them on their scrutiny. The key is to turn irritation into satisfaction.
Better Interactions
Your MSP company is going to encounter many personality types, and even your finest clients will have some issue manifest at some time. Prepare your customer service team preemptively by figuring out who is who and running training to initiate strategic interaction strategies like these.
