4 Ways MSPs Are Winning Backup Clients
In a recent Facebook Live Chat, Axcient featured longtime partner, Phillip Long, the Founder and CEO of Business Information Solutions (BIS). Charlie Tomeo, Axcient’s Chief Revenue Officer, and Matt Dugan, Senior Group Product Manager also joined the discussion. In honor of World Backup Day, the three channel experts discussed business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR). Within the conversation, some important points for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) emerged. How is your MSP emphasizing the criticality of backup with prospects and clients?
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#1: Cost of downtime
Today, Phillip says clients are more concerned with how quickly they can restore, rather than the backup process. With business continuity driving business and an ever-increasing reliance on technology, businesses have no tolerance for downtime. Understanding these concerns, Phillip helps clients measure the cost of data loss at their organization.
Philip explains, “I’ll simply take their labor cost – and most companies know much they pay in labor, in fact, it’s probably one of their biggest expenses. And then I’ll divide that by 2,080 hours in a year, and then multiply by an average outage to show them how much real money downtime costs.”
“We’re not even getting into opportunity costs, etc., I just talk about how much payroll just went out the door that didn’t do anything. It’s money truly lost.” He goes on to say, “I think a more simplistic approach works best.”
#2: Comprehensive BCDR
By this point, everyone in the channel and anyone working with MSPs should understand the challenges of preventing data loss in remote environments. Axcient x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud (D2C) not only simplifies BCDR for MSPs, but it ensures data security for clients. When the hardware-free BDR solution was released, Phillip moved all of his clients to x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud.
Phillip raves, “I love x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud because I can’t tell you how many times, historically, a person puts a file or a database – something very important – into a folder that wasn’t in the backup set. It’s just so much easier to have everything backed up. And then to be able to spin it up into the cloud… well, that’s the cherry on top.”
With x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud (D2C), there are no expensive appliances, time-consuming onsite visits, limitations, or the stress that comes with traditional BDR.
Philip Long of BIS says this about x360Recover D2C, “I don’t have to have a Tier 3 engineer asking the right questions to the client about where their data lives. I can just say, ‘we’re backing up every volume on that machine,’ and boom. We’re done. That simplified backup to a large degree.”
As an IT advisor of sorts, MSPs need to both educate clients about the importance of backup, as well as ensure data security with best-in-class solutions.
#3: Backup stability
The only way to restore data is with good backups, so it’s important to prove the integrity of your backups to clients. Fear of backup failure keeps many MSPs up at night, which is why Axcient created AutoVerify. AutoVerify automatically virtualizes the latest backup recovery point for each system before checking the health of the backup, and finally, initiating backup verification. As an early adopter, Phillip was weary of automatic verification. He said in a previous interview:
“Whenever AutoVerify says that it will start, it starts. So that’s a huge component from a time-saving point. We’re going to eventually trust it [AutoVerify], and stop doing the manual verification, which is going to save my guy 20 to 30 hours a quarter… That’s another savings.”
No manual verification is required, and with SLA-based alerting, you can guarantee quality backups while sleeping soundly.
Matt says of the alerts and escalation rules, “We are providing actionable information, in real-time, where there might be an issue with capturing a backup that would cause you not to meet your SLA. We have enhanced stability and we’re now at over 99.95% SLA. That is an amazing amount of backups happening that are all successful, 3x a day.” With a competitive SLA, automated tools, and real-time notifications, you and your clients can be confident in recovery.
#4: Personal touch
The relationship between MSPs and their clients has to be a personal one in order for clients to feel supported. If a client leaves BIS, Phillip and his team conduct an “autopsy” to determine how they broke trust with the client. Phillip says that trust comes from having confidence in someone’s intention to do right by you, having the ability to do so, and finally, execution. Oftentimes, the autopsy reveals a high number of client touches, potentially negative interactions, and mainly technician communication. Philip established an alert system to identify clients who may be having these types of interactions. Based on the scenario, these clients are often escalated to a manager for extra support. The role of the manager is to make a human connection, understand the issues and pains of the client, and reach a resolution where the client feels cared for.
BIS also uses what they call “Wow Cards” both internally and externally to recognize the personal lives of teammates and clients. If someone has a life event – whether it’s the passing of a loved one, welcoming a new family member, getting married, juggling stress – a handwritten Wow Card is sent via snail mail to acknowledge the event. Internally, Wow Cards are described as, “Oops, I caught you doing something great.” Not only do Wow Cards build on relationships between BIS and their clients, as well as within their team, but it helps techs develop and improve soft skills around active listening, conflict resolution, and communication.
Are you winning clients with BCDR?
Axcient provides one platform for MSPs to Protect Everything™, including BCDR, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and secure sync and share. We’re 100% focused on the channel and helping MSPs grow their business. Axcient enables MSPs with advanced features like hardware-free BDR, ransomware rollback, chain-free technology, and simple backup management in the unified x360 Portal. With Axcient, MSPs grow profits and margins by reducing vendors, automating tasks, and offering clients the latest innovations in data protection.
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About the Author: Carissa Johnson // Product Marketing Manager, Axcient
Carissa Kohn-Johnson has a background in healthcare technology and information technology and currently works as the Product Marketing Manager for Axcient. She has a lot of MSP Channel experience from planning and attending hundreds of conferences and tradeshows, and found her passion in technology, and working with MSPs in particular. Connect with her on LinkedIn – perhaps you can contribute to the Axcient blog?
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