The MSP customer retention challenge: Combating the 12% annual churn rate

Protect This House.

Under Armour’s iconic slogan and marketing campaign, first introduced in 2003, was seen as a rallying cry for teams, teammates, fans, etc.

Nearly a quarter century later, this same slogan applies to the MSP industry. 

‍With a 12% average annual rate of customer churn across global MSPs, it’s time to do more to lean into our foundation — ensuring it’s solid — while also expecting more from your ITSM.

Unfortunately, for many MSPs, the foundation is weak, and the expectations are low.

This was one of many topics covered last week in Berlin at an incredible 3 days at N-Able’s Empower event. As the newest members of N-Able’s Technology Alliance Program, this was Xurrent’s first time at their annual customer event. It certainly will not be our last.

‍Chris Black and I had the privilege of hosting a session called Not Your Grandmum’s ITSM, where we tapped into Chris’s extensive experience building MSPs from the ground up (3x!) using real world stories and anecdotes. My role was to pair his accounts with examples of how the Xurrent platform aligns to help.

We highlighted the common challenges facing growing MSPs while also looking forward to the myriad of new capabilities modern ITSMs (such as Xurrent) offer.

It’s time for MSPs to expect more from their ITSM.

Protect what you’ve built

“Expect more” begins with protecting what you’ve built.

When scaling an MSP, traditional wisdom points to business drivers such as added marketing budgets, geographical expansion, increased headcount, and improved technical skills as key growth drivers. 

This is 100% accurate. All true. However, the above cannot come at the cost of building a strong foundation. Said another way, added layers of growth cannot come at the expense of weakened service delivery.

Customer churn in the MSP business averages 12% annually. A successful quarter of new business sales can easily be undermined with lost customers.

The good news? Technology can be leveraged to help head off potential customer churn by:

• Managing major incidents
• Constantly focusing on customer satisfaction trends
• Leveraging AI, integration, and automation

Managing major incidents

Production incidents can be massively disruptive. Yet, far too often, organizations get stuck in the “Doom Loop” — the fighting fires stages we detailed here, outlined in this graphic:

Even worse: 81% of companies surveyed reported that the exact same failure has recurred since the initial incident.

Every MSP in the world spends some time fighting fires; however, there’s more to it than merely “solving the problem.” Customers want to see MSPs prepared with action-oriented playbooks, proactive communication tools,  a spirit of retrospection, and the desire to learn from past mistakes. 

Xurrent sees this issue and has tackled it head on. Zenduty and StatusCast (2 components of the Xurrent platform) provide your team with the necessary tools to not just “extinguish the fires” effectively but also learn from them to reduce the chance of a repeat incident.

• Zenduty: Best in class alerting and incident management. Get the right people to the war room faster than ever before. Execute necessary playbooks and bring transparency to the entire process.
• StatusCast: “Would you like me to fix your problem or give you a status update?” As Chris said on stage, “the answer is always YES.” With Statuscast, MSPs can remove manual updates and provide a one-stop shop to keep all stakeholders constantly informed.

As part of the Xurrent platform or individually in your favorite toolchain, these two components provide end-to-end incident management capabilities that will quickly help you exit the doom loop.

Constantly focusing on customer satisfaction trends

Managing customer satisfaction is never a “one and done” proposition.

ITSM platforms have evolved dramatically in the last decade. World-class tools like Xurrent give MSPs the ability to communicate and collaborate with their customers rapidly and easily. With embedded customer satisfaction surveys and transparent SLA reporting, Xurrent brings a data-driven view into the current state of any customer relationship. 

Xurrent’s sentiment analysis automatically collects, categorizes, and visualizes customer feedback — looking at the tone and context of conversations — and then, using AI, provides actionable insights, such as mood indicators or conversational tone shifts.

The platform helps IT teams proactively improve service quality and enhance user experiences.

‍The net result: MSPs know with certainty the quality of the service they provide and quickly gain visibility in areas that need attention.

Leveraging AI, integration, and automation

90% of IT organizations cite repetitive tasks as key contributors to low morale and attrition. 

When implemented correctly, AI, integration, and automation enable MSPs to provide faster, higher quality service — helping alleviate potential morale and attrition issues.

N-Able’s N-Central platform operates as the central heart of how an MSP provides technical service to its customers. From executing scripts to identifying security risks, N-Central is used extensively in the MSP community.

Xurrent is now, officially, a proud member of N-able’s Technology Alliance Partners. Thanks to this integration, tickets can be logged in real time, keeping businesses compliant and providing a full audit of the work completed.

The depth of AI capabilities available in the Xurrent platform is designed to help the MSP do more, faster, and with fewer resources.

Why is this so essential?  Finding, retaining, and building strong talent at an MSP is one of the hardest parts of scaling an MSP. 

It’s imperative that teams are empowered with tools that can automate away repetitive tasks (see 90% stat above). Xurrent’s AI and automation tools are intentionally built with this in mind —natural language generation of automation rules and AI-powered triage tools get problems directly to the right people.

The Xurrent Virtual Agent, built from the ground up, reduces the burden on MSPs from inbound questions that could be answered with a knowledge base article or access to other open requests.

The ITSM bar has been raised

The advancements in the ITSM space have exploded recently. 

However, before taking advantage of the new tech, MSPs must ensure the foundation — the “house” is strong. That means employing quality software aimed at helping organizations level up the service they provide. 

The Xurrent platform has both the strong foundation and the powerful, AI-driven enhancements necessary to transform service management. Our partnership with N-able takes that a step further by continuing to strengthen the value we provide to MSPs. 

Easy.
Advanced. 
Complete.

Expect more from your MSP. Learn how Xurrent and N-able raise the bar. Chat with an expert today.