Key Points
- Collect Feedback Across Multiple Channels: Capture input from ticket surveys, QBRs, interviews, and escalations to get a clear picture of your service quality.
- Map Feedback Directly to SOPs: Categorize comments by the affected procedure, rank severity, and identify where unclear or outdated steps create friction.
- Prioritize SOP Updates by Impact: Address high-frequency and important issues first to reduce recurring problems and improve customer experience quickly.
- Assign Ownership for Every Update: Define who is responsible for revising, approving, and validating each SOP to maintain accountability.
- Communicate Improvements Back to Clients: Inform clients about how their feedback has influenced SOP changes, thereby reinforcing trust and demonstrating responsiveness.
- Conduct Regular Reviews: Utilize quarterly or biannual SOP reviews to incorporate new insights, track trends, and ensure documentation remains aligned with client needs.
Client feedback is arguably the most valuable resource a managed service provider (MSP) can acquire. It cannot be found without already reaching some level of success, and can kick off a process of iteration, partnership, and growth for both your MSP business and your customers. This article will show you how to integrate client feedback into your MSP SOP reviews.
You should seek, document, and protect this client feedback and integrate it into your regular internal reviews to identify areas of improvement. It can then be used to identify new value that can be provided, and as an example for future clients during the tender process. You should also use client feedback to enhance your standard operating procedures (SOPs) by updating them regularly to improve and align them with changing expectations, new requirements, and best practices.
What is an effective way to utilize client feedback?
Client feedback directly relates to the specific service you provide and its quality, timeliness, and effectiveness. By analyzing this information, you can:
- Maintain and improve service quality
- Identify new opportunities (for example, a new service that can be provided that directly addresses real customer needs)
- Improve customer trust
- Demonstrate competence to prospective new clients
All of these lead to growth through increased patronage from existing and new customers for your MSP through service excellence.
SOPs are the backbone of consistent service delivery for MSPs
SOPs are the documents that you create that detail the steps you take for recurring tasks. For example, you may have an SOP document that shows how a technician should perform a backup that includes steps that define the software to use, how to set the backup destination, and how to verify that the backup was successful.
To collect, archive, and analyze customer feedback so that it can be integrated into your SOP review process, you’ll need the following tools:
- A documentation platform (e.g., IT Glue, Confluence, NinjaOne Docs, or SharePoint) to store your SOP documents
- Mechanisms to collect client feedback (ticket surveys, QBR notes, service reviews, post-resolution calls)
- A defined SOP review cadence (usually quarterly or biannually)
- A simple feedback categorization model (e.g., usability, clarity, speed of resolution, communication)
Client feedback directly addresses the effectiveness of your SOPs from their perspective, rather than being limited to an internal assessment — which may not factor in aspects such as clear communication or your client’s perception of being ‘looked after’ while critical incidents are resolved. In addition to revealing potential friction that isn’t visible to your team, feedback can be used to prioritize SOP updates based on their impact, demonstrate your responsiveness, and ensure that your services align with evolving client requirements.
The methodologies below will help you integrate client feedback into your SOP reviews.
Method 1: Collect feedback from multiple channels
If client feedback (positive or otherwise) is not proffered, seek it out!
Feedback should be recorded regularly so that the changing nature of your service can be tracked, and that updates to your SOPs can be confirmed as improving services. You should capture information from wherever possible, including:
- Ticket surveys: Capture post-resolution ratings and comments
- QBR notes: Review recurring issues flagged by stakeholders
- Client surveys/interviews: Gather structured feedback on service delivery
- Support escalations: Identify areas where unclear SOPs slowed resolution
This information should be consolidated into your documentation platform so that it can be searched and analyzed.
Method 2: Map client feedback to SOPs, then categorize and rank severity
When reviewing, categorize which SOPs are causing the most problems, and rank their severity.
For example, your SOP for creating new user accounts may be causing confusion, and need to be updated for clarity (often, setting up multifactor authentication can confuse users unfamiliar with it, and may require extra explanation). Issues like this would cause frequent issues and will need to have their SOP update to address this cause of inefficiency, but would be a lower priority than rectifying the SOP for critical issues like inaccurate backup recovery instructions that cause recovery delays.
Method 3: Prioritize SOP updates by impact
The most impactful changes should be addressed first. Tabulate the information you have collected above, and use it to guide which order SOPs will be reviewed and updated.
- High Impact/High Frequency: Immediate SOP update (e.g., common ticket types)
- High Impact/Low Frequency: Review in next SOP cycle (e.g., critical outage response)
- Low Impact/High Frequency: Clarify SOP (minor usability tweaks)
- Low Impact/Low Frequency: Archive for future monitoring
It is important that you assign owners to make and validate changes, so that there is accountability and all items are actioned.
Method 4: Communicate SOP updates back to clients
Communication is key to the success of every MSP: customers are paying for support, and must feel supported. Even if your technical measures are world-class, if your customers do not understand how you are meeting their needs in the most reliable and efficient way possible, they may question their choice of MSP.
Showing clients that their feedback matters and is actioned goes a long way towards this. Highlight to them how their feedback has resulted in changes to your SOPs to meet their specific requirements, and directly acknowledge their input. Your feedback review process should also be reviewed regularly to ensure that enough data is captured to paint a full picture of the effectiveness of your service, from the client’s perspective.
Leverage NinjaOne integration for a streamlined SOP review and approval process
In addition to providing remote access, mobile device management (MDM), remote monitoring and management (RMM), and integration with endpoint security, the NinjaOne suite of MSP tools can assist with the creation of SOPs and management of client feedback.
You can collect helpdesk information directly from NinjaOne Ticketing and link it to the relevant SOPs in NinjaOne Documentation, where client feedback can also be stored for later review. You can leverage automation for SOP reviews and client feedback analysis, and generate reports that show how your clients’ input has been addressed and influenced improvement for your SOPs.
Integrating client feedback into your SOP reviews ensures procedures evolve to meet ever-changing real-world demands. By systematically capturing, mapping, prioritizing, and communicating changes, you can strengthen trust in your MSP, reduce recurring issues, and align services with your clients’ expectations.
