Challenges Faced by MSPs in Light of COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis has proven to be a challenging time for IT support teams and managed service providers (MSPs). It hasn’t only left these organizations in a vulnerable position, but also in a state of uncertainty as to what may be in store for them. 

OnPage interacts with current and prospective clients ranging from large businesses to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This puts us in a unique position to discuss, through this blog, on how MSPs are facing unprecedented challenges and increased service requests during the pandemic.

Inundated With Work-From-Home Support Requests – High Ticket Volume

On-call techs are receiving panic-driven requests through a variety of sources, such as emails and phone calls. Requests from these channels tend to slip through the cracks, especially when resolution teams face massive volumes, while having no context into an issue’s severity. 

Though OnPage MSP clients are also experiencing a surge in alerts, they’ve been much more resilient to the sudden demand. In verbatim, here’s what one of our MSP clients had to say, “… We’ve been able to meet our standard SLAs even during these times, leaving our customers extremely satisfied and wanting to buy more endpoints. It took us a crisis to understand the value of the complete OnPage package.” 

OnPage streamlines the incident alerting process through rich text notifications (with attachment options) and distinguishable high-priority mobile alerts. MSPs will always know the severity of alerts to better prioritize their response plan. OnPage also provides on-call rotations and escalations, allowing web console administrators to task engineers and create “turns” if the first person is unavailable. 

How MSPs Can Proactively Leverage Downtime to Their Advantage

We’re also coming across MSPs that are facing a slow-down due to closures and client downsizing. On the other hand, some MSPs are well-oiled and prepared for the pandemic, having set procedures to operate effectively during a crisis. In either case, MSPs should take this time to refresh their documentation and business processes. Essentially, what will distinguish successful MSPs from other organizations is who’d come out stronger after the pandemic. 

Embracing Digital Transformation

The crisis has certainly pushed some MSPs out of their status quo, forcing them to fully embrace digital transformation. Business processes will experience paradigm shifts, and some of those will go on to become the new normal past the crisis. People will be more receptive to digital transformation, having experienced its benefits during the pandemic.