What if your biggest threat to success is your own growth? Don’t get us wrong—growth is always exciting. And according to estimates, the MSP market will reach USD 731.08 billion by 2030.
But growth also comes with challenges (more tickets, rising client demands, and tightening SLAs with every new contract). Yet, without the right support setup, your engineers will be buried in repetitive tasks instead of focusing on projects that build revenue, increase retention, and raise your MSP’s reputation.
Here are the three biggest support challenges growing MSPs face, and how to address them before they start costing you contracts.
Challenge #1: Ticket backlogs that never seem to end
As the managed service provider, you’re the single point of accountability. That means every minor interruption in your client’s workday gets logged as a support request in your service desk system. And the bigger you get, there will be more of this.
The reality of backlogs and SLA risks
Here’s the thing, though. Tickets only become backlogs when they arrive faster than they’re resolved. Yet, MSPs rarely see this support challenge building in real time. The queue looks stable (because urgent tickets are prioritized), but older, lower-priority tickets quietly stack up—turning the supposedly busy days into SLA troubles.
Examples of when the imbalance creeps in:
Right after the new client onboarding
A fresh client means dozens (or hundreds) of new users firing off tickets on Day 1, such as login issues, account setups, printer access, and email bugs. All at once.
During major changes: migrations, rollouts, or outages
Any major event (cloud migration, infrastructure upgrades, system outages) can spike ticket volume overnight. All marked urgent.
After hours and weekends
Do your internal staff work standard business hours? Maybe. But if your clients operate in different time zones, or if they run 24 hours a day (like e-commerce, healthcare, logistics), they may still be sending tickets while your team is offline.
What’s the usual firefighting scenario? Skilled engineers are bogged down in password resets, MFA issues, or access requests, and can’t focus on complex fixes. Resolution times silently stretch longer and longer. (When around 40% of Tier 1 tickets needed no human involvement.)
Now there’s a quiet build-up of “ticket debt” that snowballs into SLA risks, coupled with increased client anxiety, which erodes their trust in you. So, backlogs don’t just threaten SLAs—they also threaten client relationships.
The fix: smarter ticket triage + Tier 1 and Tier 2 outsourcing
You don’t beat backlogs by working harder. You beat them by working smarter. Start with triage to quickly sort and route requests—because not all tickets need your most expensive engineer.
Once your queue is sorted, send the repetitive frontline noise to an external team built for speed. Plug in outsourced Tier 1 and Tier 2 support to clear the clutter of tickets that can swamp engineers even when they don’t need their expertise. So now, they finally get to:
- Chase root-cause fixes, fixing the underlying causes of your tickets
- Deliver high-value, revenue-driving projects like migrations and infrastructure upgrades
- Deepen client relationships through strategy and consulting
The real win: First-response times shrink, backlog clears faster, and client satisfaction spikes.
Challenge #2: Providing 24/7 coverage without burning out staff
Another support challenge arises when your client base becomes more geographically dispersed. The bigger you get, the farther it spreads. And suddenly, someone is always online somewhere—which means someone always needs you.
Clients expect “Always On” service
For MSPs, this service means no downtime, no “closed” hours, and no gaps between time zones. If your client’s VPN crashes at 3 a.m., someone from your team needs to pick up. And if you can’t provide that, they see it as a service gap. Well, that expectation hits hard:
- Your best people sacrifice rest or burn weekends on low-level fixes
- That grind drains energy
- Left unanswered, those after-hours tickets stack up and explode your queue by Monday morning
The cost of in-house coverage
Trying to meet 24/7 demand using a 9-to-5 model? That’s exactly how burnout starts creeping in. Picture this: To keep response times fast, you push engineers into overtime, night shifts, and weekend rotations. But it’s unsustainable.
People get tired, mistakes increase, and morale tanks. Wakefield Research surveyed 600 data engineers and found that nearly all of them (97%) reported feeling burned out in their roles. Worse, burned-out engineers leave. So, 24/7 coverage doesn’t just cost overtime—it can cost you talent.
The fix: flexible outsourced coverage
Rather than hiring and managing your own night-shift team, purchase a service from an outsourced support provider who already has trained staff working 24/7. Partnering with external agents aligned with your clients’ time zones is the practical way to extend your coverage without draining internal resources.
Outsourced agents can:
- Cover nights, weekends, and holidays without draining your internal bench
- Provide follow-the-sun coverage so someone is always online for your global clients
- Keep SLAs intact while not forcing your best engineers into round-the-clock duty
The real win: Clients get 24/7 service, and your engineers protect work-life balance so they stay sharp and engaged.
Challenge #3: Balancing growth with service quality
As new clients roll in and revenue climbs—and so do expectations. Every added account means more tickets, more follow-ups, and more pressure on your engineers to deliver fast, flawless support while still driving projects forward.
Why service quality often drops as MSPs scale
Real talk: when your MSP grows, you don’t just get more of the same work. You get new kinds of work, overlapping dependencies, and heavier coordination overhead. And complexity is the silent killer of service quality.
Now lay this on top of today’s reality: 97% of MSPs planned to expand their service portfolio by an average of six new offerings. More moving parts, more specialized requests, and more opportunities for things to get missed.
Instances when quality slips:
- With more clients and more tickets flying around, it’s easy for updates to get lost.
- Engineers’ constant context-switching between projects and tickets increases errors and slows response times. One hour, they’re deep in a migration plan—the next, they’re resetting someone’s MFA.
- As your team stretches thinner, interactions can feel transactional, so clients start wondering if they matter less now that you’ve grown.
The risks
Small missteps start stacking up: missed SLAs (as engineers juggle too much), frustrated follow-ups (when clients don’t get timely communication), and lost renewals (ultimately, clients churn—eventually leave. So, service quality decays little by little until clients finally walk away.
The fix: proactive, scalable support
The way out of “service quality drops” is to build systems that scale quality along with volume. You don’t have to pick between growing and delighting, though—you can do both. Just stop trying to do it all alone—because outsourced support teams can:
- Handle routine updates, documentation, and follow-ups so nothing falls through the cracks
- Help your engineers focus on deep technical work
- Deliver consistent, polished service that keeps CSAT scores high
The real win: Your client experience stays exceptional even as your MSP scales—you retain contracts and boost your recurring revenue.
How outsourced support empowers growing MSPs
Yes, all three support challenges above are fixable. Redesigning your support to scale with you is the natural next step, and outsourced support makes it possible.
With the right outsourced support partner, you can:
- Cut first response times by up to 82%. Routine tickets get cleared fast, keeping SLAs safe and clients calm.
- Lift CSAT scores past 95%. Clients get consistent, around-the-clock help, dependable support—reliability translates into higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
- Win back 20+ hours of engineer time every week. Your best people finally get back to high-impact work—projects that win new business, keep existing clients loyal, and push your MSP ahead of competitors.
- Scale without piling on headcount. Keep winning contracts without scrambling to staff up.
Good to know: These tangible results are NOT just hypothetical promises—MSPs achieve them with LTVplus as their outsourced support partner.
Turn support challenges into a growth edge
Growing MSPs don’t have to sacrifice SLAs or burn out their teams to keep up—that’s a false trade-off. Done right, outsourcing support breaks you out of the “either/or” trap. You’ll be elastic, more profitable, and razor-sharp in responsiveness.
While your outsourced team handles frontline tickets, after-hours coverage, and follow-ups, your engineers stay locked on projects that bolster your MSP. Ready to scale without the growing pains?
LTVplus helps businesses increase customer lifetime value through dedicated, fully managed support teams. See how LTVplus helps MSPs crush their support challenges.
