Forget ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. Let's talk about the things that really keep MSP owners awake at 2 AM.
We’re talking about the strange noises coming from your service board, the phantom problems that refuse to die, and the chilling feeling that your business is stuck in a haunted graveyard of missed opportunities.
This Halloween, we’re sharing three all-too-real tales from the MSP crypt. And when you really tune in, these stories reveal expensive business problems that might be haunting your MSP right now, often rooted in a lack of effective MSP team training.
Horror Story #1: The Case of the Endless Ticket
It begins with a whisper… a simple Tier 1 ticket. "My password won't reset."
It should take 15 minutes. But your new technician, lacking the foundational skills from proper IT team training, tries the first basic fix that they think is right. It fails. They try another. And another. An hour passes. The user grows restless. The ticket, a seemingly harmless poltergeist, is now a full-blown possession, draining your tech's time and your client's patience.
Finally, the ticket is escalated. A senior tech solves it in seven minutes.
A 15-minute issue just haunted your service desk for two hours, killing your profitability and leaving a trail of frustration in its wake.
Horror Story #2: The Escalation Ritual
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The next tale begins with a familiar incantation. It’s that dreaded, all-too-common phrase that could be about anything, a server, the VPN, a critical app -- but tonight, it’s a classic: "The printer is offline."
Instead of diagnosing, they immediately perform the Escalation Ritual.
They summon your most powerful and expensive resource, a senior engineer, or worse, you, away from critical, high-margin project work. The summoned expert appears, spends ten minutes fixing a driver issue, and then vanishes, leaving behind a cursed invoice for non-billable time and a project that's now a day behind schedule.
This is the sign of a tech who isn't equipped to handle different situations and is haunted by uncertainty.
A one-time escalation on a tricky issue? It happens. But when it occurs too often, it becomes dark magic that sacrifices valuable time.
Horror Story #3: The Growth Graveyard
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Our final story is the most terrifying of all. It’s about an MSP that is busy but not growing.
The owner is chained to the service board, loomed over by the ghosts of yesterday's problems. The team is perpetually stuck in a loop, fighting the same fires over and over. They have no time for the MSP upskilling needed to take on more complex, higher-margin clients.
The business isn't dead, but it isn't truly alive either. It’s a zombie, shuffling forward but going nowhere.
Your Survival Guide
These horrors all have the same root cause, and luckily, the same cure.
The endless ticket, the unnecessary escalation, and the stagnant growth, they are all symptoms of an undertrained team.
And the sunlight that banishes these monsters requires a full commitment to a culture of consistent MSP professional development.
- A well-trained tech exorcises the Endless Ticket by solving it efficiently the first time. This happens when every technician has a foundational strategy for troubleshooting the most common issues.
- A confident team doesn't need to perform the Escalation Ritual for routine problems. This confidence comes from having access to guides that address a wide variety of issues.
- A growing team escapes the Growth Graveyard by developing the skills to take on new challenges. This is built on a clear learning path that reinforces their skills and shows them what they need to master to upgrade from service desk fundamentals to high-level security and strategy.
A Starting Point
With Empath, you can set your people up for success on day one. No more hip-to-hip training, no more shadowing. This MSP training and accountability platform lets you organize, assemble, and rollout a program that equips your team members with exactly the foundational knowledge and skills that your specific and unique MSP needs.
Empath’s learning philosophy emphasizes the value of real-world experts, housing a diverse and ever-growing catalog of courses made by Navigators. From the courses you can customize learning pathways (or build your own) to further enable your team to level up.
When integrated within a system that promotes accountability, each member of your team has the full potential to become independent, confident, and reliable in their respective roles. This is how you free yourself from expensive business problems and build a real system for MSP employee development.
Ready to escape the horror? Book a demo to see how Empath works or start your survival training today with a 14-day free trial.
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