Do you feel like your MSP (Managed Service Provider) is being kept busy resolving the issues in your office?  That may not be a good thing.

Of course, it’s a great sign if your managed IT service provider is busy in their first months serving your company.  They need to take the time to thoroughly learn your network, diagnose problems and upgrade any software and hardware that needs attention – and all of that change may lead to extra tickets as your users learn how to use the new capabilities those upgrades provide.  But after a few months, you might start to wonder “how much of their time am I getting for my money?”


In reality, that’s a good sign – as long as your employees feel like their technology is serving them better than it ever has before.  That’s because a good provider doesn’t simply wait for problems to arrive before they get to work improving your network.  The best MSPs will spend a large amount of time behind the scenes working to keep ticket counts down by preventing problems before they happen.  Each time a user-reported problem does occur, the MSP evaluates whether it’s being caused by a larger issue.  If the problem does have a larger root cause, that’s addressed too, even if it will take far longer than treating the symptoms causing problems for the end user.

This is expensive in the short term – if an MSP isn’t confident they can retain their customers for years, it’s typically far cheaper to wait for the problems to arrive and react to them. But in the long run, diagnosing and solving problems at their source saves both the client and the provider money – the client’s employees run into less technology roadblocks, and the MSP doesn’t have to fix the same problem over and over again.

So if you want to measure the value your IT service provider is offering, don’t just ask about tickets.  Ask your employees if they feel like they’re having fewer technology problems since the provider came on board.  Ask them how responsive the provider is when they do have an issue.  Ask them if the provider is helpful and friendly when they’re contacted.  If all of this is true, the odds are good that the MSP is hard at work behind the scenes, even if it’s not apparent by the ticket count.

To learn how WingSwept’s Managed Services offering can help your company better achieve its goals, call us at 919.779.0954 or email us at Team_WingSwept@WingSwept.com.