5 ways self-service can help Direct Microsoft CSPs and customers
Does this sound familiar to you?
A customer of yours has just hired a large number of new employees, who all need Microsoft 365 licenses. Not just one license, but a multitude of licenses for numerous users and different tools. Your MSP help desk team starts the repetitive manual task of assigning each license and subscription to specific users, but then a similar request hits your screen from a different customer.
Even with the best of intensions, relying on manual processes eventually limits service delivery and scalability. Especially when large multi-tenant environments and multiple end-customers need subscriptions and licenses.
A self-service portal could be your answer.
Why? Self-service can help you to streamline license, business, and team processes, increase customer satisfaction and optimize a positive customer and CSP experience.
What does self-service do?
1. Gives customers control to perform license tasks themselves
When in use, self-service allows customers to manage Microsoft 365 license quantities quickly and autonomously. They can add, renew, remove, and carry out the straightforward tasks that might take your help desk team longer to do.
2. Reduces technicians’ workloads
Empowering customers with the license knowledge they need will significantly reduce your service desk’s workload. Self-service is a convenient tool that can stop back-and-forth customer communications and an influx of ticket requests. This means they can focus their time and efforts on more complex support tickets.
However, customer experience won’t be compromised. If issues arise, they can easily log requests to their MSP, who will likely have insights to support further.
3. Promotes cost and billing transparency
Customers like to see, track, and understand where their money is going. As self-service portals often provide a clear overview of monthly, ongoing, and historical spend, customers can streamline their budgeting and cost management. MSPs can set spending limits—pre-agreed of course—and automate communications to advise customers if their at risk of going over-budget.
4. Increases customer satisfaction
Customers prefer to use self-service over speaking to help desk members, and know they can manage a quick fix without their MSP. A win-win for both customer and MSP, and a great way to strengthen reputation.
5. Sets MSPs up for successful true-ups
A user’s license is an extremely important part of their day-to-day, but its management is often low on MSP priority lists. If time isn’t spent correctly allocating Microsoft 365 licenses, true-ups sessions will be slower with more time needed to correct inaccuracies. Your customers can point you in the right direction by clearly controlling what they need. You then can manage the rest.
In summary
When self-service is used behind the scenes, skilled staff can focus on skilled work, while knowing software is supporting customers and delivering back-office workloads more efficiently. It helps to save internal time and resources yet still delivers remarkable customer satisfaction and experiences. Self-service also allows you to service customers more efficiently, as portals usually provide deeper insights into buying behaviours and needs, and opens doors to other value added services.
Many of you will understand the Don’t repeat yourself (DRY) principle. With that in mind, consider exploring self-service and automation to support with service desk processes, future true-ups and Microsoft 365 license success.
Cloud User Hub is a Microsoft 365 Cloud management and automation platform that allows Microsoft CSPs to automate and manage Microsoft tenants, users, and licenses in a single consolidated hub. Book a demo to find out how you can unlock the full Microsoft 365 Cloud experience and provide the best service for your team and customers.
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