Lessons in Communication: An End Customer's Perspective on Working with an MSP with Tom Cahue

[00:00:00] Today, I'm talking with an end customer, and how he got here is interesting.

[00:00:07] He reached out to me.

[00:00:08] In fact, he specifically sought me out to talk about lessons of communication he learned

[00:00:15] from experiences with his own MSP.

[00:00:18] So let's hear from Tom Kawe, IT manager for the Mary Campbell Center, on this bonus

[00:00:24] episode of the business of tech? I wonder if they or the showforcements, you know, the typical sales of MSB and why they're important and why they're valuable. Handle things on the back end so they could be there for our residents. We're a long-term skill care person for those physical disabilities. We promote independence. So the layman's term is think of a nursing home

[00:03:01] except people with intellectual and physical disabilities

[00:03:05] that live there, so not just the elderly.

[00:03:07] And we promote, like I said, we promote independence. or a less popular MSP would suffice in that round because it was more, I know the person and not a 1 in 100 number. So back then that was the general consensus of where that happened. Flash forward eight or so years, in 2019, 2020, that small MSP was bought out by a nationwide MSP

[00:04:22] out of Plano Tech.

[00:04:25] So now our person right down the road, right, legacy service so all we got was an MSP that was 8 to 4 Monday to Friday and that was it and I don't know and nobody cared to reach out to us once this happened to let us know where we stood what was going on and things like that so as you can already tell that you know hey somebody probably dropped the ball on their end you know what I mean that way so this didn't really come

[00:05:42] to light because the previous person before me and get it. This long story short was a DNS issue. Isn't it always DNS? Yes, it always is. You should just jump there first.

[00:07:00] We get there, I call up and say, OK, well, I don't have access into, you know, that's our MSP.

[00:07:06] I would give them a call. in onsite and reboot the fire. That is it. So it took us 13 hours to do something that simple because of what was going on. Not to mention this was, and I should have said this before, this is Sunday going into Monday of Labor Day. So that onsite isn't there. And I just was squeaky enough as a wheel that I got somebody to go in and do this

[00:08:22] because I'm yelling that we have a host of DHR.

[00:08:24] So network uptime and internet availability

[00:08:27] is the utmost support. who you know we were going through they gave all their plan of corrections you know we're gonna go into training we're gonna go into all of this they shouldn't have told you that you're a customer of the 20 not your customer of this company and then we bought you know or and now you're a part of us so in terms of that they gave us they went through everything of our contract they

[00:09:41] gave us the 24-7 we talked over everything that we would need we walked

[00:09:45] through our facility these people out of Plano Texas could walk through and have I think it's just cool, you know what I mean? That type of stuff. They fell in love with it. They customized the program to us. They've been there and communicated with us. We have a standing call now, once a week. They really put, we got two dedicated advisors. We have our own personal number to get to our team of engineers in case something were to go wrong again.

[00:11:01] And from everything I've seen and learned

[00:11:04] and heard from other companies that I don't think

[00:11:06] they don't offer that to anyone. It's easy to say put a customer first, put a customer first, but when somebody's struggling, like how we were at that point, we were struggling. We were trying anything we could for them to come in and maybe work outside of our scope of the contract until we were under that scope. Really impressed a lot of people.

[00:12:21] So what do you think is the key lesson that has made the difference in your relationship talk to board members, talk to individuals who were very concerned, and eat a lot of humble pie, in lack of a better word, that he showed me. Now, they messed up, but they did everything right. And I do believe they deserve a second chance because we are number

[00:13:42] one a small client to them. To be very honest right, it's on me to just speak it. You know what I mean? To call you, to get where we can get back in this safe zone.

[00:15:00] The communication, the biggest inter-in communication,

[00:15:03] the biggest lesson I learned is it starts here.

[00:15:07] You know what I mean? defined in the very beginning. You need that first. I need to know who my engineers are

[00:16:20] and you know how many there are

[00:16:21] and you know who my help desk people are

[00:16:23] and how many there are.

[00:16:24] And I need to know, you know, which, you know,

[00:16:27] how do your shifts know, you know, don't try to pull the wool over mine and then

[00:18:44] personality thing. You know what I mean? It'd be great, you know, to have the same one across the board, but I if you work better with a certain attitude of people, go with them and then, you

[00:18:50] know, vet their technical abilities later. I'm going to ask a targeted tech question because

[00:18:58] I've been talking a lot about it on the show. And I'm really interested to hear where your

[00:19:03] thinking is on how AI, artificial intelligence, in that, I do believe is going to become more and more crucial because in our infection prevention program, I think if we can spot trends

[00:20:22] before they become friends, we can move back down from uh maybe it was three percent rate of reinfection to two percent and that extra percent can go a long way over a year you're not going to see it the first time but when you do it over a course of a year that's maybe eight to ten times want to come to work with a healthcare, you're going to get a loyal, very, very loyal. We don't like paying to the healthcare. You're going to get a very loyal customer, but it's actually a challenge on you. You're going to have to be the one to keep that engagement always positive, always ongoing

[00:23:01] and focus on the off hours rather more than the on hours.

[00:23:06] Any MSP can tell me what MSP radio to find out more.

[00:24:21] The Business of Tech is written by me, Dave Sobel, under ethics guidelines posted at businessof.tech.