Why Working at an MSP is AWESOME!

Let’s be honest, working at an MSP (Managed Service Provider) or any other helpdesk environment is tricky. In this dynamic setting, there are challenges that can come up in unexpected ways and places… 

Luckily, these challenges present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve yourself and have a rollercoaster of fun and experience that is hard to find elsewhere! 

Buckle up and get ready for an adventure in this fast-paced, mind-expanding and lively community.

You will have a chance to engage yourself and:

• Learn how to use various technology
• Improve and strengthen your mindset and confidence
• Develop extraordinary people skills
• Make interesting friendships with like-minded people
• Have a steady and secure income
• Work from anywhere in the world!

Whether you are an experienced technician or somebody who is just starting out in the IT field, the MSP environment will bring you an unique set of skills and a vast experience in many different fields. 

Mind Blowing mental improvement

Working in a dynamic environment such as an MSP requires a willingness to take on challenges and creatively surpass them. 

Problem-solving is something you will improve immensely, and it will be the basis of the diverse skill set you will develop. 

Researching the issues and troubleshooting will get your gray cells in top form!  

The agility and creativeness you apply to your work will transfer to your everyday life and affect the way you manage your time outside of work. 

Boosting your self-reliance and independence is another serious side effect. Most of the time, you will need to figure out things on your own, and that will show you that you can count on yourself to detect, investigate and solve complicated tasks.

The passion you nurture for life, technologies or any other subject important for you is crucial to this type of work. If there is not a self-driven attitude and passionate approach, it is likely that the work you provide to the MSP will not be top level. 

Confidence that follows after struggling with a difficult problem, the frustration of feeling stuck or not knowing what to do next, after finally overcoming the issue is so rewarding and will stay with you forever. 

• Array of technologies at the your fingertips

Become the local hero! Learn technologies to fix any problem be it with computers, sound related, screens, networks, printers, emails.. You will become the go-to person for your friends and watch their jaw drop as you go in and fix that bug that was bothering them for weeks in minutes!

MSPs, or managed service providers, work with an array of different clients providing tailored service according to the nature of the company they provide the service to. From small photo studios and medium transportation companies to large business enterprises, the use and the type of technology can vary drastically. 

Depending on the size and the type of business the infrastructure and its complexity changes. To support this infrastructure all use some kind of software that you will get to cover.

This doesn’t mean that you will be building these infrastructures, however. After the sales team and the managers finish their work, it will eventually go down to support that takes care of the new product integrated.

If the type of jobs requires it, the technician will see how the on-premises server works, how to do some on-site fixing and help customers remotely…. Etc … you need to know a lot of technologies and sometimes you will have minutes to learn how they work!

Most often the software that is used in an MSP is: 

• Microsoft Office 365
• Connectwise
• Freshdesk
• Team viewer
• Sonicwall
• Cisco
• Search engines

Knowing the technology a certain MSP uses will help you immensely when applying for the job. However, the field is constantly improving and there is no way you will be able to know everything in advance.

That’s why curiosity, intelligence and passion for learning are crucial in this type of business which will present you with an opportunity to develop them further!

Refined people skills – personally and professionally 

Get really well at talking with people.  You’ve probably heard somewhere that everything in our life is a negotiation… You spent some time watching youtube videos of former FBI agents and TED talks about how to spot a liar or “get what you want with these 3 steps”…

At an MSP you will be learning these skills hands-on! Negotiating your way and getting through a frustrated customer can leave you feeling like some sort of mentalist when they start to soften up and transform from something out of a nightmare to a smiling delight. 

• This will train you for real-life situations where you will need to position yourself out of a problem or know exactly what you need to say to turn the situation around in your advantage.

Believe it or not, you have a big role in their life, give a little personality and they’ll love you! You can make somebody’s day and be their saviour, since the issues they have are so important for their work and life to function successfully. 

• The feeling you get from that is so rewarding and can leave you with a smile on your face for the end of the day or even the week!

Since customer service is a big and important part of an MSP it is important that an MSP invests in improving their customer service constantly. 

One of the tricks to the best customer service can be found in the 3 A’s:

1. Acknowledge
2. Align
3. Assure

That, in practice can sound something along the lines of:

“I am aware of the importance of this issue and I know how hard and frustrating it is to be dealing with this now but I can assure you that right now we are working on fixing it and giving our best to solve as soon as possible. “

Be the bridge between the company and the people and fill in the important role of not just the person who is solving the malfunctions but also a person who is on their side and someone they can turn to with any problem without hesitation or doubt that they are in safe hands.

We have picked your interest and you want to work at MSP? Help desk or IT technician is one of the common position in MSP. Read this article to learn how to get a job at MSP as a technician!

Make friends and expand your circle of interest

Make some friends, interesting people that want to have inspiring conversations with you about tech stuff and a lot more! 

Self-driven and intelligent individuals are drawn to MSPs and positions in these types of companies. 

Lively and quirky people you are surrounded with at work will lift up your spirits and introduce you to different subjects, experiences and views.

Having group huddles and meetings regularly is a sign of a healthy MSP environment. Especially in remote working conditions, keeping in touch with your teammates and exchanging ideas, proud moments and pain points is invaluable for business and personal well-being. 

Business etiquette is to be respected and professional demeanor is making sure that the relation within the company is respectful. 

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a warm and friendly atmosphere where you know that you are supported by your peers and superiors, all working for the same goal of feeling good while doing great work. 

Stable and reliable position

Most MSPs are pretty reliable, and can provide you with a stable income so don’t worry about steady pay! 

Working as a managed service provider means that the companies, cooperating with the MSP, need to think of the infrastructure they need, which softwares that encompaeses and how much resources (in this case people) they need.

This means that the expenses are already agreed upon in advance and the expenses covering your employment are already secured.

Start out your career with an advantage

MSPs are highly recommended as a starting point for individuals with less experience in the IT sector.

It is fast-paced and you need to absorb it or fail.

You cover so much different technology and client sizes.

Manage businesses of all shapes and sizes from very specific needs to a more general support.

Working at an MSP will make you a valuable asset to any company you apply to since you’ve built a vast and diverse knowledge base. 

You are very involved with everything that is going on in the workplace since each company has different technology, and you being exposed to a lot of different softwares is invaluable for your knowledge and experience.

Work online from your home or at a beach!

Work from wherever!  These days a lot of businesses are turning online and seeing the benefits or remote working! 

Be it from the comfort of your home or a warm sunny beach, making your office mobile is something more and more people are striving for! There are some types of workers that will never return to the office.

At Support Adventure, we’ve seen the benefits of remote working years ago, and have been operating successfully since then as a 100% remote company.

Our amazing staff living on 4 continents and our experience with more than 30 MSPs worldwide, has taught us a lot about the needs of both the technicians and the companies. As a MSP hiring agency we strive to give individuals from economically less successful countries an opportunity to live a comfortable and fulfilling life.

All you need is a good headset, fast internet and a silent environment.

If you are considering joining our company and becoming a helpdesk technician, apply with us! and checkout this list of countries that offer long term digital nomad visas!

We welcome you with open arms!

WATCH OUT FOR MSP RED FLAGS TO AVOID

All that being said, there are some sub-optimal MSP environments that we decline cooperating with. 

The unsuccessful, disorganized or non-caring environments and procedures can be met on your journey of finding the best MSP to work for. Knowing what to avoid will save you precious time and guard you from the discomfort that goes with this type of environment.

Pay attention to these fields and how they are organized:

Interview – If the interview feels uncomfortable and like a one-way street, something is not right. 

Interviews should be a dialogue between the candidate and the employer. Exchanging ideas and getting the feel of the work culture is the basis of a good interview experience.

Interrogation-style interviews are a sign of a bad work environment. 

Ticket writing systems – one of the most important parts of keeping things in order and making an MSP work successfully and in a productive environment. 

Tickets have to be:

• Written in detail and robust
• Be ownership based
• Have a clear note on the status

We’ve created a free ticket note writing guide that you can download for free here to see the best examples.

Another important thing is using ticketing systems such as Freshdesk, Zendesk, etc to have the best ticket note writing systems

Escalation policy – closely connected to the ticketing systems, escalation procedures should follow a clear line of escalation, accountability and serve a purpose in learning.

Rather than going to a group chat, where escalated tickets can get lost or neglected, setting an ownership based system with the involved technicians name and a time-frame of some 30 minutes of a technician working on a ticket before they escalate should work well.

The ticket can be escalated through a dispatcher or service desk manager or assigned through the ticketing system to a senior engineer who will then reverse-escalate it to the initial technician with clear notes on the steps taken so that the technician will know how to handle similar issues in the future.

Moreover, there should be a threshold which, if passed, rings all bells in the company and can get to the right person in time, before the damage has spread.

An MSP should be aware of what are the best ways to communicate with their office or remote team.

Ring-groups – alongside bad ticketing systems and dysfunctional escalation procedures ring groups spell disaster for an MSP and their employees. 

Ring groups can create such a distracting environment that the technicians can end up feeling frustrated, unwilling to do their job and can lead to them dropping calls when being overwhelmed by the work they are handling.

Time-tracking – tracking 100% of the time, every minute is simply not healthy and does not boost productivity at all. 

If it feels like policing one of the following might happen:

• Burnout from trying to achieve unrealistic standards
• Lying on your timesheet so you could meet the expectations
• Tracking bizarre things like making coffee, going to the toilet or talking with your mom

There should be time for arbitrary tasks and relaxing. 

Now that you are aware of what types of companies to avoid, you are ready to start your journey as a MSP technician and see your life and career blossom!

Know how to beat competition in your online job interview and win your desired position with an MSP!

A typical day at work for an MSP

The work an MSP technician does on a typical day can vary from peaceful to chaotic depending on the nature of the work and the size of the business.

Keeping up with this tempo is seamless however because people immediately get pulled into the wonders of technology, interaction with people and friendships their team members enrich the time with.

In a day a technician will be dealing with instances that can be summed up in 3 main parts:

1. Technology
2. People
3. Data

If you like any of the three above, you will enjoy your everyday tasks at an MSP.

Firstly, you will be acquainted with technologies you maybe didn’t even hear about before, let alone know how to use them. Tools that help you do your job well are constantly improving and changing and you will be there to follow along with this growth. 

You will be utilizing various software daily to help you with troubleshooting, tracking and fixing the issues the customers have and learning how to apply them in creative ways.

The people you will encounter can oftentimes brighten your day. Of course, there are inpatient or stressed people but the majority are happy and grateful to have a chance to speak with you and view you as their hero.  

To be sure you are being the best support to the users, check out our article on points that are a MUST for great customer support here!

Keeping track of those customers, their issues and the steps you took to solve them is part of the daily routine at an MSP.  These ticket notes will ensure that other people can learn what you already know too! They will build a sense of responsibility and success in you since you can look at the neat, complete documentation and proudly say “Yup, I did that!”

Working on these 3 main parts daily creates a closed circle where technicians and their colleagues, the company and the customers work together to bring success to all the parties involved!

You should have passion for the field, intelligence and a self-driven attitude to be able to fit in and excel in the MSP environment.

If you’re an MSP looking for top remote staff, reach out to us for our outsourced MSP staffing services!