Published: June 23, 2026
Have you ever had one of those dining experiences that stays on your mind and spirit for weeks…even years?
Maybe it was at a resort on vacation, maybe it was for a celebration of a good quarter in business. Or, the kind where your server visited your table just enough to check in…not too much. Perhaps the chef came out personally to ask how the food was, or, maybe it was a nice restaurant on a date night with your spouse, or night out with your collective, immediate family — where the courses were brought out in a fair and timely manner, the food was cooked to perfection, the temperature and weather were just right, and you left feeling like you'd been well taken care of…the way mom, dad, and/or granny did. Maybe it was a mom-and-pop diner where the host remembered your usual and the cook began cooking before you sat down. Across any of these establishments — the experience was memorable and warm, and they kept you coming back and recommending to others.
That experience is what customers of your managed service provider (MSP) organization want — and what makes them tell other businesses about you.
Let’s stay in character…in the experience. Let’s say that every MSP customer experience runs through a “kitchen brigade”. A kitchen brigade in this sense is a metaphor for the coordinated team behind every meal served to customers — each playing a specific part so the whole service runs in harmony and the experience produces GREAT returns for all involved. The roster and staff grows as the MSP grows. Whether your revenue ranges from a few hundred thousand to a few hundred million, you can model that evolution like the journey from food truck ownership to a 5-star Michelin restaurant group and more.
Wherever you sit on the revenue and peer group arc, there comes a point where your team will expand and need the strategy to ensure you can continue scaling and providing an optimal customer experience through handoff across your teams. Your roster should include some variation of the following roles:
The Host a.k.a. the Sales / Account Manager — this person is the first face the customer sees. They take the reservation and set the table expectation.
The Sommelier a.k.a. the Sales Engineer (SE) / Solution Architect (SA) — this is the technical-inventory expert who advises tableside on which solution pairs with the customer's environment and order.
The Executive Chef a.k.a. the virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) and/or the virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) as their counterpart on the IT roadmap side) — this person designs the menu, leads quarterly business reviews (QBR) and technical business reviews (TBR) at the 30,000 ft. altitude. They own the customer's technology and security roadmap and maintain oversight.
The Sous Chef a.k.a. the Service Delivery Manager / Director of Operations Manager — the person who runs the line during service, supervises the line cooks, and steps in for the executive chef.
The Line Cook / Chef de Partie a.k.a. Professional Services (PS) / the Implementation Engineer — this person builds the dish at their station. They translate the agreed-upon recipe into the live customer environment: configuring tools, validating integrations, documenting what was deployed, and making sure the final plate matches what Sales, the SE/SA, and the customer expected.
The Expediter / Aboyeur a.k.a. the Project Manager — this is the person who calls the timing and coordinates kitchen and front-of-house.
The Server Captain / Chef de Rang a.k.a. the Customer Success Manager (CSM) / Technical Account Manager (TAM) — this is the person who frequents the customer's table, provides exceptional customer service at the ground level altitude.
The Maître d'Hôtel a.k.a. the Vice President (VP) of Customer Success / Director of Customer Experience — the front-of-house leader, oversees the floor, holds the relationship at the relationship-management 5,000 ft. altitude.
Supplier Relations + Restaurant Marketing a.k.a. the Channel/Field Marketing and Vendor Partner Manager — these are the people who manage your vendor partnerships and the sourcing of ingredients and materials to help fuel the whole menu.
Brian Doyle from MSP Business School framed the foundation for an exceptional customer experience well. He advised that MSPs and MSSPs need to be razor sharp on where the edges of an agreement are. The cleaner the edges are at signature, the more naturally each handoff carries them forward. Every clean handoff should create ease of doing business for your customer. Here is how the handoff should flow between these roles:
(1) Host to Sommelier (Sales → SE/SA). The host briefs the sommelier on what was set up at the reservation — what the customer is here for, what they mentioned wanting to try, what preferences they shared. The sommelier walks up to the table already knowing the context of the customer's order. In your MSP, this means Sales briefs the SE/SA ahead of a discovery call between the SE/SA and the customer. The SE/SA arrives knowing what the customer's technical stack consists of and what services it needs, including their current compliance position and any audit timing they're working back from.
(2) Order to the Kitchen (Closed-Won → PS/Implementation Onboarding). The ticket reaches the kitchen immediately after the order is placed. In your MSP, that means PS and Implementation receive the full deal context immediately — what was sold, what was scoped, what conditions were agreed to, which compliance requirements need to be considered, and which of their stakeholders are most important end-to-end to the customer. The customer hears from the implementation lead quickly, with a clear first step and a timeline they can plan around. The customer's mental clock and the team's clock stay in sync.
(3) Line to the Server Captain (PS → CSM/TAM). Before the line cook walks away from the station, they walk the server captain through what was prepared and how. In your MSP, this is a live handoff conversation between Implementation and Customer Success (CS) — voice, video, or in-person, even if only briefly. Let’s say this is a security centric customer (although the concept applies to any customer), when the customer asks how a configuration was set up, what needs to be considered, what's coming next on the security roadmap, and what evidence the customer needs prepared for their next audit or business cycle, the CSM answers with confidence and context.
(4) Server Captain to Executive Chef (CSM/TAM → vCIO/vCISO → Renewal/Expansion back to AM). When the regular customer comes in for their quarterly or bi-annual dinner, - for example, for a significant event like an anniversary, graduation, to celebrate a good quarter in business, or birthday - the server captain briefs the executive chef on what the table has been served, what was scoped during the last visit, and what conversations are still pending. The executive chef — your vCISO or vCIO or — walks the customer through the new, well-informed tasting menu (the QBR or TBR) with full continuity. Some topics and evaluations that may surface include threat detection priorities, compliance shifts, and your customer’s zero-trust posture and positioning. Renewal and expansion conversations pick up where the last one left off. The AM/AE can come back into the conversation with context.
Behind each of these four customer-facing handoffs, your supplier relations and restaurant marketing — your Channel/Field Marketing lead and your Vendor Partner Manager — are running a parallel set of handoffs with your technology vendors.
When sales surface a deal that fits a vendor co-sell motion (Handoff 1), your Channel Marketing lead is bringing the vendor's Partner Development Manager (PDM) into the conversation and registering the opportunity in the vendor's co-sell deal registration system. This would be AWS Customer Engagements (ACE) for AWS partners, and the equivalent for Microsoft, Splunk, or your other named vendors. When the deal closes (Handoff 2), your Vendor Partner Manager is filing the joint endeavor or marketing claim against Business Development Funds (BDF) and/or Marketing Development Funds (MDF), lining up vendor field engineering support if the implementation is complex, and confirming the marketplace transaction route.
During delivery (Handoff 3), they stay close to the implementation team in case vendor-side product expertise is needed at the line. And at the quarterly business review (QBR) or technical business review (TBR) (Handoff 4), they're bringing the vendor's product roadmap into the conversation, surfacing new co-sell opportunities, and lining up the MDF for the next campaign cycle. The supplier-side handoffs run parallel to — and reinforce — the customer-facing ones. When both sides are running in step, you unlock funds to help fuel the customer experience, you accelerate vendor partner activation, and you generate better and goal-aligned pipeline through your vendor channel.
The customer experience is the most critical influence of an MSP’s survival and growth, and customer experience is a universal language, whether you are an MSP or a restaurant. Every role involved is equally as critical for said experience. Invest accordingly. Time. Money. Resources. Attention. Intention. People. I close this by noting that customer experience is built upstream — by the owner, the CEO, the operating partner — and felt downstream by the staff and customer, continuously and consistently.
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Best regards & Best Wishes,
Shaun Martinez, PMMC™
Co-Founder, Principal Go-to-Market Consultant, ExSailIQ 360
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