Whenever I speak to our customers, it’s clear that an established relationship, communication and trust are the key characteristics they valued most when working with us.

It’s also especially important when we’re talking about services. You can't feel them, you can't touch them, but you can certainly tell if you like the person or not who's providing it to you.

Accountability Is Trust You Can Audit

Trust is nothing without accountability. The truth of the business world is, not everything goes smoothly 100% of the time. But if I've learnt anything from the past, it's that communication and transparency are at the core of any response. There's no point skirting around the issue, and that's what you should be able to expect from us when something goes wrong: we take responsibility, tell you exactly what we'll do, set realistic expectations and keep everyone involved updated until the issue is resolved. That’s what accountability looks like in practice.

But that’s only one side of the coin – the other is numbers – and that’s what finance teams look at when they make a decision. It reframes the conversation around outcomes you care about as a customer.

Instead of “we did our utmost to get you back online as quickly as possible,” you’re hearing “we resolved 94% of P1 incidents within SLA last quarter, cut your average ticket time from 1 hour to 20 minutes, and prevented an estimated £40k in downtime.” My guess is that the latter statements would be what would make you renew the contract.

The KPIs You Can Hold Your MSP Accountable to

There’s a few – and here’s what they mean and why they’re relevant.

Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). The single clearest signal of service quality. It should improve over time while your IT services provider gets to know you. Obviously, if this gets longer, it’s a telltale sign you may not be a priority anymore and tough conversations will need to be had.

SLA attainment. Achieving what’s promised in the SLAs means your provider is hitting the baseline of what they’re promising, so always demand to see the attainment percentages. As they’ll be self-reported, also ask staff who deal with your IT support regularly if that reflects their experience.

First-contact resolution rate. High FCR means fewer disruptions to your staff, so a high number is a good sign.

Downtime avoided and incidents prevented. This is your MSP’s extensive background work that you won’t necessarily notice - patching, monitoring, and proactive maintenance - so no news is generally good news.

Cost per ticket / total cost of ownership. Your finance team loves this one – obviously this should be as low as possible. Although with cost per ticket, bear in mind that if your overall tickets number are low with higher expense, it actually means you’re encountering fewer problems because things work.

Why the Numbers Matter Beyond the IT Team

The person who signs off your IT contract is increasingly not the person who works with us day to day. IT decisions are being pulled toward finance, procurement, and the C-suite. Those colleagues were never in the room at 11pm when we resolved the incident that saved your month-end. They see a cost centre and a contract value.

That’s our job to solve, not yours. We should be converting the service into financial terms before anyone asks — cost avoided, productivity protected, risk reduced — and handing you a one-page business case you can put in front of your CFO: here’s what you spent, here’s what you got, here’s what it saved you.

It also changes the price conversation entirely. When a cheaper quote lands on your desk, a provider who has only ever given you goodwill leaves you comparing feelings against a hard number. With the numbers in hand, you can compare like for like. A “they’re 15% cheaper” looks very different once you can see that what you have delivers 30% more measurable value.

The Rhythm You Should Expect From Us

Accountability isn’t a quarterly scramble to assemble a report the week before a renewal. It should be baked into how your provider operates — and here’s what that looks like from your side of the table.

It starts at onboarding, where we agree the metrics that matter to you — so we’re measuring what your business values rather than what’s easy to count. The data capture is automated through our service management and monitoring tools, so the reporting is a by-product of the work rather than a manual exercise someone has to be chased for. Then it arrives on a predictable cadence, whether that’s a monthly dashboard or a quarterly business review, so you can see the value all year, not just at renewal time.

The quarterly business review is the most underused asset in that rhythm. It’s the session where you find out what you got for your money, where the risks are heading, and what should change next quarter. If your QBR doesn’t tell you that, ask for one that does.

The Bottom Line

Trust is what makes a provider worth signing. Accountability is what makes them worth keeping. In a market where every line of IT spend is under a microscope, the provider you want isn’t simply the one you like most. It’s the one who turns that relationship into numbers, puts those numbers in front of your finance team, and does it before you have to ask.

Like your provider, by all means. But measure them.