In an earlier article on how to hire MSP technicians, we asked the question, “Is technical ability enough?” We found out that: No, technical ability alone doesn’t keep clients around.
As a way to approach this, Empath Navigator and MSP Security & Service Leader Josh Hohbein presents the idea that running MSP service delivery has more in common with restaurant operations than many teams realize. A cooked meal is the baseline expectation, but service is what guests actually remember.
The real challenge for owners is moving this concept off the whiteboard and into daily operations.
Borrowed directly from the service industry, here is a practical blueprint you can bring to your next MSP service desk training session to transform your technicians from reactive troubleshooters into hospitality-minded professionals.
In a restaurant, the host stand sets the immediate tone for the guest experience. A cold, disengaged greeting makes diners feel ignored before they ever taste the food. In contrast, a warm, attentive welcome puts them at ease, even if the kitchen is running behind.
On your help desk, the first 60 seconds of a ticket or phone call dictate the entire lifecycle of that issue. To implement MSP help desk best practices, your Level 1 or triage team must treat their desk like a host stand.
Instead of letting techs dive straight into a cold technical diagnosis, train them to run every initial interaction through a quick, 4-step checklist:
Sometimes a quick update doesn't shorten the actual wait time for a technical fix, but it eliminates uncertainty, and uncertainty is what ultimately breeds client frustration.
Before the doors open for the lunch rush, a restaurant kitchen doesn’t just sit around waiting for orders to fly in. Line cooks check inventory, prep ingredients, clean their stations, and follow opening procedures so they can minimize variables before the chaos hits.
Too many MSPs operate in a state of perpetual reactive scrambling because they skip this preparation phase.
Before the ticket board fills up, give your team a daily “line prep” checklist: a short opening routine focused on spotting service-impacting issues before clients feel them.
Your checklist could include:
This moves your team out of reactive survival mode and helps them step onto the floor prepared for the rush.
A restaurant doesn’t rely on memory to make sure every dish comes out the same way. It uses recipes, prep instructions, and repeatable processes so the guest experience stays consistent no matter who is working that shift.
Your service desk needs the same kind of operational consistency. If every technician handles common requests differently, clients feel the variation. One password reset is smooth. Another takes too long. One onboarding task is fully documented. Another depends on who happens to be available.
Start by choosing one repeatable service desk task and documenting it like a recipe.
Good candidates include:
For each task, write down:
The goal is to give your team a shared baseline, so clients receive a more consistent experience every time they ask for help.
A restaurant uses a quick pre-shift huddle to align the front-of-house servers with the back-of-house kitchen staff. They discuss menu changes, unavailable items, expected rushes, and anything the team needs to communicate consistently.
Your service desk needs the same alignment. Change management isn't truly complete until the engineers on the front lines actually know what changed, why it changed, and how to respond to it.
Turn your daily morning standup into a quick, high-impact "ally rally" focused on three core questions:
This step eliminates mixed signals and instills confidence in your clients.
Restaurants train heavily for busy periods because the Friday night rush is entirely predictable. While MSPs do everything they can to prevent critical incidents and outages, emergencies still happen. The difference between a controlled response and absolute chaos comes down to practicing under pressure before the incident occurs.
To elevate your MSP service delivery, you shouldn't wait for a real ransomware alert or network outage to see how your team reacts. You need to run lightweight "rush hour" tabletop drills.
Gather your team and walk through a simulated high-pressure scenario (e.g., a ransomware alert, suspected account compromise, major outage, or critical line-of-business application failure). Instead of focusing solely on the technical fix, grade your team on the operational choreography:
Running these scenarios is a foundational element of MSP employee growth and development that builds confident leaders.
Take the Next Step Toward Service Excellence
Ready to move past pure technical competence and build a service culture your clients can feel? Josh Hohbein has distilled his unique journey bridging restaurant management and IT leadership into his foundational Empath course, Serving Up Solutions: Service Industry Lessons for Your MSP.
Across his lessons, Josh provides the actionable structures, role mappings, and real-world incident response frameworks your entire team needs to deliver service with consistency.
Start Your 14-Day Free Trial of Empath today to get instant access to Josh’s full course and start building a high-retention, hospitality-driven service desk.