Consulting 105 – Why Don’t I Want My Customers to Return for the Same Problem? – SQL Server Performance Tuning

March 29, 2019

This is the fifth of my 5 part series on my over 10 years of experience in Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check consulting engagement. Here are the five blog posts which are the essence of my consulting business. You can also call it my business secret. In today’s blog post we will discuss one of the most popular questions I receive – Why Don’t I Want My Customers to Return for the Same Problem?

Why Don’t I Want My Customers to Return for the Same Problem?

‘If you go to the doctor for medicine for infection and they give you a week’s prescription, would you go to the doctor every day for your daily dose? No, you don’t go to the doctor every day. You will complete the course of the medicine to see the results before you make any decision.

‘Next time, even if you see a different doctor for the same symptoms they will know that the medicine course will produce positive results. Well, for absolutely the same reason, I do not want my customers to return to me for the same problem.

Reason 1: Use, Rinse, Repeat

SQL Server architecture and the heart of any of the common problems do not change much across the years. I have been using some of the solutions scripts that I wrote over 15 years ago for SQL Server 2005. There is definitely an enhancement to the SQL Server overall, but the core remains the same and there is not much change there.

Whenever I come across a new server, I change a few things here and there and apply the solutions to the new client. To be honest, I have been able to solve most of the problems with the personal toolkit that I have built in the last 10 years. If I can solve the problems easily with my toolkit, I believe others can also solve the same problems if I teach them once. This is the reason that I tell my customers to use the same solution I provided to them earlier to solve the same problems. Use, Rinse and Repeat!

Reason 2: Challenge Me!

Here is another honest story. I have been solving SQL Server Performance Problems for over 10 years. I know pretty much every single problem and solution that is available out there. When clients reach out to me with an SQL Server Problem, I get bored solving the same problems but I am always excited to teach and enable my clients to learn how to solve their problems. I believe that if I teach my customers to solve SQL Server Problems when they encounter them next time, they will be able to solve them easily, making the overall situation win-win.

I like to get a challenge. I believe I am a good teacher and when I teach my clients how to solve any SQL Server problems, I know they will know how to solve them in the future. Now, when they can’t solve the problems, I really want them to reach out to me. I really enjoy solving the complex problems and I get a kick out of it when I know I have solved a problem that had been causing problems and couldn’t be solved before.

Reason 3: Learn New Things

SQL Server Performance Tuning is not a very complex area but there are multiple sides. If you solve one problem today, there will be another new problem in the future. If you solve the new problems there are always new SQL Server features being released. Additionally, there is a whole new world related to Cloud, Open Source and DevOps when we discuss SQL Server.

There are lots of new things to learn, why learn the solve the problems which have solved once!

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Consulting, SQL Server

Consulting 104 – Why Do I Give All the Performance Tuning Scripts to My Customers? – SQL Server Performance Tuning

Consulting Wrap Up – What Next and How to Get Started