When It's Time To Fire A Customer

By The Business Solutions Network

Just a quick post-holiday tip for those of you switching from break-fix to managed services. Some experts advise you to periodically (6 months is a good rule of thumb) review how much effort you're putting into each of your customers. Doing so will enable you to uncover some interesting things. For instance, you might uncover repeat issues that indicate a more significant problem. You might also learn that your employees aren't as efficient as they could be. With either example, you could find that  not you're not coming out on the profitable end with a customer.

In such instances, depending on the cause, it might be necessary to increase your rates or drop a customer. Of course, no one wants to lose out on potential revenue, but if you aren't making money off the customer, something needs to change.

Identifying unprofitable customers, nagging issues, and less-than-efficient employees can be greatly aided by using a PSA (professional services automation) tool. Such applications do much to give you a 360-degree look at your entire book of managed services. Without the transparency that a PSA affords, you might be giving away your services and not even know it.

If PSAs are new to you, check out a recent PSA product review we performed of the most popular ones on the market today.