Sooner or later, one of your customers is going to ask you that question. Maybe not in those words, but the thought is already forming. They read the same headlines you do. Many of them now have Microsoft 365 Copilot on their own desktops, summarising Teams meetings and drafting Outlook replies. They can see what AI does, and they’ve worked out that their MSP is using it too. The obvious next step in their mind is a discount. I think that pressure is real, it’s coming fast, and how you respond will shape your business for years.
Don’t hide it, and don’t race to the bottom
The first temptation is to keep quiet. Say nothing about AI, keep billing the way you always have, and hope nobody asks. That won’t last. Your customers are using the same tools, so the “magic” isn’t a moat anymore. When they discover you’ve been quietly automating work while charging as if it were all done by hand, trust takes the hit, not your margin.
The second temptation is worse. Cut prices to match the time saved. If a task that took an hour now takes ten minutes, charge for ten minutes. Follow that logic and you’re pricing yourself on keystrokes, in a market where keystrokes are getting cheaper every month. That’s a race with no finish line, only a cliff. I made a similar point in Know What Can Move, and What Must Not: be clear about what you’re prepared to trade before the conversation starts.
Price the outcome and the accountability
Customers were never really paying for your hours. They were paying for things to work, for problems to go away, and for someone to stand behind the result. AI doesn’t change that. If anything, it sharpens it.
Here’s the part people forget. When Copilot or an agent gets something wrong, who carries the responsibility? Not the software. You do. Your expertise in knowing when the answer is right, and your accountability when it isn’t, is what the customer is buying. Price that, not the effort.
So be open about how you use AI. Explain where it speeds things up, where a human still checks the work, and how you keep their data safe in Purview and Entra while you do it. Transparency turns a suspicious question into a sensible conversation.
Reinvest the savings where they can see it
The time AI gives back shouldn’t vanish into thin air. Put it into work your customers never had before: more proactive maintenance, tighter security reviews, faster response, and more time spent advising rather than fixing.
Then make that visible. Picture a monthly insights report your team builds with Copilot in Word and Excel, showing tickets resolved, risks found, and recommendations for next quarter. Picture faster ticket resolution because your techs triage with Copilot before they even pick up the phone. Those are tangible gains a customer can point to.
The quarterly review moment
Picture a quarterly review with a long-standing client. Halfway through, they lean back and ask, “If AI does the work, why am I paying the same?”
A weak answer is defensive. A strong answer sounds like this: “You’re right, we use AI every day. Here’s what it freed us to do for you this quarter.” Then show them the security improvements, the faster turnaround and the advice they acted on. Walk them through what they now get that they didn’t a year ago. The question stops being about price and becomes about value.
Where I land
Customers will push for discounts. Let them push. Your job is to make the value so obvious that the discount argument loses its footing. Stop selling time. Start selling outcomes, judgement and accountability, because those are the things AI makes more valuable, not less.
