Professional service automation (PSA) software is designed to help MSPs streamline their processes and provide better service to their customers. However, if not used correctly, PSA software can actually cause you to lose customers. Here are four ways that your PSA software might be costing you business:

‍Tickets fall through the cracks in your PSA.

A PSA is designed to help you track and manage customer tickets, but if tickets are not being properly assigned or followed up on, they can fall through the cracks. This can lead to missed deadlines, unfulfilled promises, and frustrated customers.

Customers are never happy when their request for help goes unanswered or resolutions take to long. If your PSA lacks the visibility to track your customers needs, it can directly damage critical relationships. To prevent this, it's important to make sure that your PSA is set up to automatically route tickets to the appropriate team member and that everyone is regularly checking and updating the status of their tickets. 

Your PSA does not enable and enforce your processes.

A PSA is only as effective as the processes it is designed to support.

Response and resolution times, appointments, next scheduled actions, and customer communication are all critical factors in delivering your service. When your PSA does not enforce best practices and processes, your customer's experience suffers.

To make sure your processes are being followed, it's important to clearly communicate your expectations to your team and to set up your PSA to enforce these processes. This might include purchasing a new PSA with automated workflows and alerts to remind team members of important tasks or deadlines.

Not all your work is tracked inside your PSA.

A PSA is only as effective as the information it contains. Many systems that claim the title of "PSA" are little more then glorified ticketing software. If your PSA does not allow you to track all the direct and indirect work you do for your customers, it can be impossible to show the value you are delivering them. You can't show what you don't track, and if much of your value to a customer happens outside tickets, your PSA won't back you up when it comes time to save or renew an agreement. To make sure that all of your work is being tracked, it's important to set up your PSA to automatically capture information about the tasks you're completing and the time you're spending on them.

Your PSA can't show you the big picture.‍

A PSA can be a great tool for tracking and managing specific tasks or projects, but it's not always the best tool for getting a high-level view of your business. Tickets are designed to track problems and user requests, and most PSAs do a good job of that. Yet much of the value you provider to customers happens outside of tickets. Customer interactions, projects, sales functions, procurement, training, roadmaps, emails, calls and meetings: these are all things that your MSP needs to manage both proactively and reactively, yet most interactions have no place to live inside PSA systems.

If you are not using your PSA as the one authoritative place to organize your service delivery, you can knock every ticket out of the park, but still lose a customer for failing to deliver on something your PSA was not even capable of managing.

The Bottom Line‍

While a PSA can be a valuable tool for MSPs, it's important to use it correctly and to supplement it with other tools and processes to ensure that you're providing the best possible service to your customers. By tracking all of your work, enforcing your processes, and getting a comprehensive view of your business, you can use your PSA to improve your service and retain your customers.

Don’t let your PSA be the reason customers cancel services, try Zest today. Zest is the only PSA software that prioritizes customer satisfaction by allowing technicians to stay on top of their work and proactively plan customer outreach. Not only will your technicians be able to see when they have missed tickets or have failed SLAs but they will also be able to see all communication with customers and schedule in-person visits to maintain strong connections.

While other PSAs are stuck in the middle ages, Zest is slaying the dragon of complexity and offering real, next-gen solutions for today’s business environment. Don’t miss your chance to maximize your service potential and let your customer satisfaction (and profits) soar.