Most MSPs monitor the performance and failures of desktops, servers, and other types of devices. What is not as well known is that IT professionals have been helping users customize the interface on applications and devices for a long time.
While these customizations help the user have a much better experience, many MSPs don't actively monitoring the way users interact with devices. Many will simply make requested user changes or set up an interface according to what they know about the user (i.e. do they like bigger icons and text, do they need shortcuts to things they interact with frequently, etc.)
The Key to Decreasing Tickets?
An MSP's goal should always be to reduce the number of tickets per user to a minimum level. Naturally, doing so generally improves the overall user experience, drives down MSP costs, and frees up techs to focus on revenue-generating tasks.
Some technology companies are creating tools to help monitor and improve user experiences. For instance, SolarWinds is trying to help organizations make websites faster and more reliable with uptime and performance monitoring tools. The company's latest Pingdom platform upgrade fits that description.
No doubt, SolarWinds sees a gap in the market. After all, 42 percent of IT professionals said their organizations have experienced digital experience challenges in the past year, yet only 13 percent are currently leveraging digital experience monitoring (DEM).
So far, Pingdom mainly targets corporate IT departments. But we're curious to see if the SolarWinds MSP business unit somehow introduces a variant of that tool for service providers.
Several other monitoring tool companies are focusing aggressively on user experience. Examples include CA Technologies, Cisco's AppDynamics, Datadog and New Relic. Each of those companies has growing partner and service provider programs.
Extending From Devices to Applications & User Experience
So what's missing? The answer in many cases involves MSPs. As more MSPs move to a proactive support model, it only makes sense that they would extend from proactive and predictive monitoring of systems and networks toward a model that monitors and improves user experiences -- with an emphasis on applications.
When an end user is frustrated with their experience they correlate that frustration back to their MSP. Proper application performance monitoring and management will surely lead to happier clients -- and fewer tickets in the help desk queue.
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
