That Weekly Tech Visit Is Costing You More Than You Think
Your MSP sends a technician every Wednesday. Or every other Tuesday. Or the first Monday of the month. Whatever the schedule is, you feel good about it. You have a real person showing up at your office on a regular basis. That is what IT support is supposed to look like, right?
It is what IT support used to look like. Back when you paid by the hour and the only way to get help was to wait for someone to drive to your building. That model made sense when the alternative was nothing.
It does not make sense anymore. And it is probably making your technology problems worse, not better.
The Problem With “Jim’s Day”
Here is what happens when your staff knows the technician shows up every Wednesday. The internet is slow on Monday. Nobody calls. The printer is acting up on Tuesday. Nobody calls. A laptop will not connect to Wi-Fi on Wednesday morning. Still nobody calls.
Because Jim is coming today.
By the time Jim walks through the door, there is a line at his desk. Half of these issues could have been fixed remotely in fifteen minutes on the day they happened. Instead, they sat open for days or weeks, getting worse, while your employees worked around them.
This is called ticket hoarding. It is one of the most common and most damaging habits that scheduled on-site visits create. And almost every business that uses this model does it without realizing there is a better way.
What You Are Actually Paying For
Think about what happens when your technician arrives and gets hit with fifteen issues that were never in the ticket queue. Some of them are quick. Some of them are not. Jim is now running behind on his next appointment. The issues that do not get addressed today get pushed to next week. And the cycle starts over.
Meanwhile, your employees lost productive time every single day those issues went unresolved. A computer that takes eight minutes to boot on Monday does not get faster because you waited until Wednesday to report it. That is eight minutes a day, per employee, multiplied by every day between when the problem started and when someone finally fixed it.
Now add in the travel time. Your technician drives thirty minutes from the MSP office or from the last client. That is thirty minutes of your billable time spent in a car. Multiply that by every scheduled visit and you are paying for a lot of highway.
The math does not work in your favor.
What the Modern Model Looks Like
The managed services model was built to solve exactly this problem. Instead of waiting for a scheduled visit, you call or submit a ticket when something breaks. The help desk picks it up. If it can be fixed remotely, it gets fixed right now, not next Wednesday.
Most issues do not need someone in the building. Password resets, software updates, email problems, printer configuration, VPN connections, slow performance diagnostics, the list goes on. A competent help desk can resolve the majority of these in minutes from anywhere.
The issues that do need hands on the keyboard get scheduled based on priority, not on a calendar. A server that is down gets someone today. A flickering monitor can wait until tomorrow. That is how you reduce downtime. Not by hoping the next scheduled visit is soon enough.
Why Clients Still Want the Old Model
It is not because the old model works better. It is because it feels better. There is comfort in knowing a real person is coming to the office. It feels like you are getting something for your money. When everything runs smoothly and nobody shows up, it can feel like you are paying for nothing.
That feeling is understandable. It is also backwards. When everything runs smoothly, that is the service working. The whole point of proactive monitoring and a responsive help desk is to fix problems before you notice them. The best IT support is the kind you barely think about.
The weekly visit gives you warm fuzzies. It does not give you better uptime.
What to Tell Your MSP
If you are on a contract that includes scheduled on-site visits and you are wondering whether they are worth it, ask your MSP three questions.
First, what percentage of my tickets are resolved remotely versus on-site? If the number is above eighty percent, you are paying for travel time you barely need.
Second, what is my average resolution time for issues reported through the help desk? If it is measured in minutes or hours, not days, the system is working. If issues are piling up until the next scheduled visit, it is not.
Third, can we replace the scheduled visit with an on-call model and use the savings for something that actually improves my security or infrastructure? A good MSP will have that conversation with you. A mediocre one will tell you the visits are required because that is how they have always done it.
The goal is not to eliminate the relationship with your MSP. The goal is to stop paying for a habit that made sense ten years ago and does not make sense now.
Call when something breaks. Get fixed fast. Move on. That is how you actually reduce downtime.
About Brent Lacy: Brent Lacy is the author of Rewired MSP: Mastery, Scalability and Performance, vCIO Rewired: Virtually Conquering IT Obstacles, and Near Miss: Preventable IT Failures Threatening Your Business Security. With over 20 years in the managed services industry, Brent writes about the operational discipline, trust-based relationships, and strategic thinking that separate MSPs built to last from those built to bill.
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