How to deliver the best managed infrastructure services?

Introduction

Among the many areas of Tech I have worked in over the past 24 years, managed services as well as managed infrastructure are probably the ones I have worked in most intensively, in many different forms, both as a provider and as an advisor for other players in the field whom I have supported.

Although this market is still growing, the actual average client satisfaction rate is not particularly high, while the published satisfaction rates often look quite impressive (frequently between 95 and 98%): these values are misleading, I will come back to that a little later.

And yet, the vast majority of entrepreneurs in this sector, along with their teams, mean well and feel they are doing their best to satisfy their clients.

Despite these efforts, after a few months or years it is not unusual to find the provider and client irritated with one another. Sometimes this resentment grows until a cordial contempt settles in between them… or not so cordial. Nevertheless, most of them will tell you that this percentage is negligible and does not reflect the quality of the service provided. If that is what you think, have you ever had an independent third party look in depth at what your clients really think of you?

I did it for you, and the feedback is striking: the reality is much darker, and many clients simply do not dare to speak up, out of fear for their infrastructure and their business (yes, really, and the behavior, still in 2024, of certain unscrupulous providers remains a real issue). The opinion of your dissatisfied clients who do speak up is in reality a much more important metric than it seems, and one that can make all the difference.

But, then, where does this gap in perception between providers and clients come from?

What my experience of more than 24 years in this business has taught me is that there are usually several reasons for this state of affairs: and although all of them can be fixed, some are easier to fix than others. I am going to talk to you here about the one I consider most important, the fundamental reason on which everything rests: perception.

The perception problem

A perception problem It may seem incredible, but many players in the sector do not properly understand the foundations of their own business.

For most of them, it would consist of providing infrastructure and keeping it operational on the client’s behalf, with some or all of its administration delegated to them.

That is the promise made to clients, and it is generally fulfilled with varying degrees of success if we look only at the contract. The criteria used for comparison are mostly technical, contractual and legal: features, tools, dashboards, support, follow-ups, supported versions, monitoring, guaranteed recovery times, SLAs, certifications, etc.

At the same time, these providers face profound changes driven by technology and trends, affecting their "business model" which would regularly call for restructuring, investment and adaptation.

So if the promise is kept, what is the problem? The problem is that despite compliance with the "specifications" and with the contract, a subjective feeling of dissatisfaction emerges, partly because both sides misunderstand the real purpose of the service: unspoken, yet expected.

Back to reality?

You now have two choices available to you:

1) you take the blue pill, and you stop reading this article now. You will be able to remain blissfully unaware, in the reality you have built for yourself: no uncomfortable truth should disturb your little universe.

Since this is currently a growing market, your business should not collapse as a result, and should keep growing or at least keep operating, for at least several more years.

Note however that as time passes, the risk grows that your client will see your relationship, a little more each day, as that of a knife held to his throat, rather than two parties each getting what they want from the other.

2) you take the red pill and choose to open your eyes to a potentially disturbing reality, which can change your life as well as that of your clients.

In that case, keep reading this post with twice the attention, trying to set your certainties aside. Give yourself time to take it in, before drawing your own conclusions: you are not in the Matrix, you can always swallow a few blue pills to forget…

The reality

If you are still here, it is because you have chosen to take the red pill: a choice which, if you fully embrace it, will irrevocably (I hope) lead you into a more difficult reality, but assuredly better in the long run for you and your clients.

Contrary to a deeply ingrained belief in the world of Tech: fundamental needs do not change.

What matters here, then, is understanding the foundations of your own business as well as clients’ underlying needs, and, if I had to sum it up in a few points, within the scope of the service, they would be:

1) spare clients stress and dissatisfaction.
2) when that is impossible: serve as their shield.
3) eliminate that state, after the fact, as quickly as possible.

I could also put it this way: beyond letting them work with peace of mind, they must be able to *not work – with peace of mind*: that is, enjoy their evenings, weekends, and holidays while telling themselves that whatever happens, it will be handled in the best way possible.

All the criteria mentioned in the first part, and in the contracts, are in the end merely tools or means of achieving the result actually expected.

These tools and these means must continue to serve those underlying needs, and never become an end in themselves.

Now let us spend a moment on a tool that can be your best ally or become your gravedigger: processes!

Processes

Setting up processes offers a multitude of advantages: used well, they can improve efficiency, help manage resources better and establish a quality of service that is consistent and predictable, or help the company scale better (the list goes on).

But be careful: processes must not become a prison, nor an excuse for not solving the problems. Good processes, well used, will probably allow you to solve 80% of the problems, very good processes 90 %, and finally excellent processes will perhaps ensure a positive resolution of 95 or 99% of the situations you are going to encounter.

Nevertheless, whatever the rate: remember that it is in the small percentage left over of these situations that your service quality will truly be assessed (judged?) by your clients (do not forget that not all clients speak up spontaneously, and that most indicators, such as telephone surveys after receiving an answer, are misleading).

Christophe Casalegno Anecdote: This reminds me of a story that happened to me a few years ago. At that time, I had already been managing, for some time, as part of a partnership between Digital Network and OVHCloud, MIS (Managed IT Services), a managed infrastructure solution designed by OVH.

With this service, and unlike solutions such as StackX, clients had considerable freedom and a wide range of actions open to them: in particular, they had to configure their vhosts, create their databases and handle the management and generation of their Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates.

At the time, I used several criteria (mainly a combination of keywords, how long a ticket had been open, and the number and frequency of exchanges in it) to spot difficulties and know which tickets to "zoom in" on.

I then discovered an exchange that had been going on for several hours, on the subject of generating a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.

On one side, the client could not get it to work, and on the other, the system administrator kept sending him back to the documentation, without success, for an operation that was, indeed, contractually the client’s responsibility: all of this was provided for in the contract and the process…

This illustrates perfectly what I said earlier… the moment when the process must give way to common sense: « GENERATE HIS FUCKING CERTIFICATE !!!«

Indeed, carrying out this operation would have taken only a few seconds, and would have made it possible to avoid not only a huge waste of time on both sides, but also enormous frustration and dissatisfaction, a double punishment for the client (frustration that the operation still has not been done, compounded by the irritation of being treated as incompetent).

Common sense

Common sense is the other side of the scales, the element that must ensure the balance to keep the whole system of trust from collapsing.

Common sense is what allows fast, effective decision-making, especially, though not only, in situations the procedures do not cover.

In particular, it helps us adapt to unforeseen situations while keeping a pragmatic approach to problem solving, helping us find simple, direct solutions to seemingly complex situations.

Effective communication is the key to excellence in a client relationship, and here again, it is common sense, and not the rules and the procedures, that will ensure it:

A client might mention ftp when asking for a vhost or a complete environment, or say memory when he means storage, or use the French word cryptage instead of chiffrement, or else ask to "load an SSL" when what he wants is to generate a Let’s Encrypt certificate, for which he will probably have forgotten to make the expected DNS modification, or left an IPv6 record in place that should have been removed…

It is not the client’s job to know the right jargon: it is up to us, as IT specialists, to "decode" the requests, to clarify the expectations, and to reformulate them, if necessary, to make sure the requests are handled properly.

Here, common sense will make it possible to avoid over-complication and to reinforce trust: clients have a natural tendency to place more trust in the people who demonstrate common sense, because that unconsciously suggests to them a greater ability to make sound decisions.

Finally, common sense makes it possible to improve working conditions by contributing to lowering the client’s stress level (which brings us back to the fundamentals of our business), while stimulating innovation and creativity.

Conclusion

I could spend hours adding to this post, until it became a book, without covering the subject completely. But building the best service first requires solid foundations as well as aligned objectives between the provider and his client, who must both move forward in the same direction.

Every month, the client must be happy to pay for this service, because the real perceived value remains greater than or equal to the expense, while the provider and his teams, in turn, must feel the same satisfaction in delivering it in return.

It is on these foundations that all the services and products I have created within ScalarX rest. These principles, ultimately shared by many professions, are also the basis on which I devote some of my time to helping other entrepreneurs during my "Better Call Brain" sessions, to improve their products, their services, and more generally to help their businesses develop more successfully.

Finally, and beyond the cliché, this short video, under 1 minute 18 seconds long, will give you all the starting points you need for this approach to quality. For the rest, and if that is not enough for you, you know where to find me ;)