A seat at the MSP Late Night table: our CTO on first names, sales and AI

At a trade fair, one of our suppliers told our CTO Mohammad Moghtader we were mad. You're an MSP, not a software company, aren't you? These days, wherever he goes, the talk is about AI. At the MSP Show in Utrecht, Mohammad joined MSP Late Night on Tour for an episode themed "Let's talk Performance", alongside a channel manager from a software vendor and an analyst from an international acquisition firm. He talked about a team that knows customers by their first name, an AI colleague that picks up the simple work and the hardest sales job there is. Below you can read what he said, or watch the conversation yourself. It is in Dutch, so the quotes here are translated.

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Everyone is on first-name terms

If you call yourself a local partner, you have to live up to it. That point came up at the table, and Mohammad agreed completely. He explained that we are involved in both Eindhoven and Oisterwijk, where our office is: sponsoring local sports clubs, a sign on a roundabout and, around Christmas, a sign at the Oisterwijk ice rink. Not because it has to bring in business, he said, but because it is a moment to give something back.

When asked whether we want that Brabant culture inside the company too, he put it into perspective. It doesn't have to be Brabant as such, but it does have to be friendly, because that makes conversations more fun. Even when a customer calls because something is broken, the tone stays warm. And we have the luxury of a team with very little turnover: the team knows the customers, and the customers know the team.

"You always hear 'IT with a personal touch'. But to me it's actually very personal when everyone knows each other by their first name."

You can meet those colleagues on our about us page.

Culture or process? Both, in balance

Asked whether culture or process makes the difference, Mohammad wouldn't choose. The fun has to stay, but especially as you grow, you need processes to scale.

He sees what happens when that balance is lost in his own region. A few IT companies there have been acquired, and afterwards their customers suddenly have to do everything according to the new owner's rigid processes. Sometimes products they wanted to keep using disappear too. Those customers start looking around for a partner that is a little more flexible, and some of them end up knocking on our door.

"Completely strict processes, the 'no, this is how we do it' approach: that simply doesn't work, especially with small and medium-sized businesses."

The hardest sales job there is

When people ask what selling is like at an IT service provider, Mohammad has been giving the same answer for years: we actually have the hardest job. To a layperson, IT is just IT. Whether you buy it from the company next door or from us, it simply feels like a computer.

"You're selling something the other person doesn't yet know they're missing or need."

So how do you stand out? By helping. His business partner focuses mainly on new customers, Mohammad on existing ones, and in both cases it starts with asking who you can help. Then there is what the Dutch call gunnen: wanting to give your business to someone you like and trust. Someone asks whether he could take a look at a problem a friend of theirs, also a business owner, keeps running into. So he does. Two or three months later the message comes back that it helped, and that the friend would like to become a customer.

Once called mad, now everyone talks AI

The question came up at the table whether we as people need to perform differently now that tools are improving so fast. No, says Mohammad: a tool should always be there to support, and people have to stay. Virtual Computing is really an AI-first company, he said, and we have been at it for a little over a year. That supplier at the trade fair already got his answer back then: you have to embrace it, or you fall behind.

"We will never replace people with AI, but it does have to help people."

"We have a virtual employee that picks up 60 to 70 percent of our first-line support tickets and resolves nine out of ten of them straight away."

When that AI employee can't solve something, it hands the ticket to a flesh-and-blood colleague who digs deeper. According to Mohammad, a customer who asks for a manual now gets it within a second. It used to take up to half a day, until a colleague had found it in the shared drive or the knowledge base. The team is happier for it too. Resetting passwords and creating user accounts should be automated, leaving time for support questions with real depth.

For customers, our AI assistant Alex is the point of contact. If you work on one of our online workspaces, you'll find Alex right in your taskbar.

Vibe coding: yes, but mind the security

Near the end the conversation turned to vibe coding: you describe in plain language what you need, and AI writes the software. Mohammad is in favour, as long as security is taken seriously.

"I'm in favour of vibe coding too, but only if you take every security aspect into account."

That is exactly where he often sees it go wrong. The colleagues who build with AI at our company all have a background in programming or big data, and that helps.

The personal side wins

In the end the personal side will win, Mohammad said, especially with smaller organisations where trust and goodwill carry a lot of weight. They want a person to stay involved, not for everything to be AI. Or as he put it earlier in the conversation: people should always come first. We plan to keep it that way. If you'd like to meet the team behind those first names, book a call and get to know us.