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The Evolution of Customer Experience in Managed Networks

The Evolution of Customer Experience in Managed Networks Image Credit: Rawpixel.com/BigStockPhoto.com

For today's businesses, connectivity is more than a function. It’s an experience. In the past, connectivity was simply a means of getting data from point A to point B, allowing users to communicate and collaborate. Today, however, connectivity is the engine that drives global business, and the quality of that connectivity and the infrastructure on which it is built can have a massive impact on all aspects of business, from productivity to security.

That’s why, when it comes to managed service providers, simply providing the means to connectivity isn’t enough anymore. Business customers are looking for a flawless experience, from quoting and onboarding right through to deployment, delivery and ongoing support. They need to know that their connectivity solution will be robust, adaptable and able to scale with their individual plans for growth, whether they’re an international company with offices around the world, or a team of digital natives embracing remote working. Put simply, the bar has never been higher when it comes to customer satisfaction within the network solutions industry, but what’s driving this push toward experience-driven network solutions?

Today’s customers want quality over quantity

A staggering 95% of businesses will switch managed service providers when they’re unhappy with the service they receive, but only 5% will switch based on price. What this tells us is that business customers are far more concerned with the overall quality of the “product” they receive than the price, and might even be willing to pay more to a company that’s well known for delivering excellent customer service.

On the other hand, in a recent survey, only 38% of solutions providers said they tracked customer satisfaction as a key performance indicator (KPI), yet 70% tracked their return on investment. This mindset of tracking profit over customer experience is likely to reverse as customer expectations continue to evolve. But how are they evolving?

How the customer experience has evolved

Managed service providers, particularly those in IT and networking, have been on a journey in the past couple of decades. Technology has evolved at such break-neck speed that businesses have been in a near-constant state of flux, always looking to refine and develop their networking capabilities. The pandemic and the rapid shift to hybrid and remote working moved the spotlight back to connectivity, prompting businesses to reevaluate their current infrastructure and service providers. But perhaps it’s the service providers themselves that now need to evolve in order to meet the rapidly changing expectations of their would-be customers?

In the 1990s’, when connectivity was very much in its infancy and technologies like email were only just beginning to get off the ground, managed services were all about remediation. In other words, service providers fixed things and stepped in when business customers had a crisis. These early MSPs billed for time and labor and were very difficult for businesses to work into their budgets. They often used SLAs (service license agreements) that weren’t very customer-friendly and could easily be breached on both sides, resulting in fractious relationships between customer and service provider where both could potentially lose out.

By the turn of millennium, connectivity had evolved and managed services evolved with it. The days of on-site servers were beginning to fade in favor of remote or co-hosted servers. MSPs began to treat network solutions as more of an ongoing-service rather than ad-hoc firefighting, sending technicians out to customers to log issues and address concerns. The biggest change in the 00s’ was the introduction of KPIs into the mix, which some regard as the moment network solutions become network services. Some MSPs began adopting flat fees as opposed to ad hoc billing, allowing customers to treat their network services as more of an OPEX than CAPEX investment. This gave way to a recurring billing or subscription model, and firmly established networking-as-a-service (NaaS).

What today’s customers expect from managed network services

Over the years, network services have become increasingly customer-centric. That’s because networking and connectivity have become a fundamental pillar of business, with some businesses even being born in the cloud. Connectivity is no longer a binary element - there are gradations of quality that can be impacted by how traffic is managed and diverted. A user in one country can have a very different experience to a user in another country if their connectivity solution isn’t properly configured and optimized. This not only applies to accessing data, but the running of cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Do certain departments or employees get priority bandwidth? Which workloads should be prioritized over others? How smooth is the user experience, and are some employees being hampered by slow connections and poor performance?

To answer these questions, customers need visibility and control over their networks in a way that previous generations would never even have thought to ask. They need to be proactive in their remediation of problems and address issues before departments even think to raise a support ticket. They shouldn’t have to send an email or pick up the phone to get a service update, they should be able to log onto a centralized dashboard and see the health status of their networks, in real time.

Today’s network solutions aren't solutions - they’re services. Connectivity is the lifeblood of business, and businesses need their networks to be continuously monitored, optimized and improved depending on their active workload and the distribution of their employees. Modern service providers understand this and will deliver this element of control and visibility to their business customers while still supporting and managing their overall network infrastructure.

Author

With over 20 years of experience as a technology professional, Salim is the Director of Solutions Engineering in support of Expereo’s managed global network and cloud connectivity solutions. His expertise includes, but is not limited to Global Internet, SD-WAN, and Security.

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