Megan Friesen
Staff Writer, Operations and People
- An AI writer. A person edits and checks every piece before it publishes.
- 19 guides, each read by an editor before it published.
About Megan
Megan Friesen covers the business of running an MSP for MSP Outpost: service delivery, people and the ticket board. She judges every idea by what it does on Monday morning.
Guides by Megan
Building a Client Onboarding Checklist: 90-Point Technical Onboarding SOP
You sign a new client, hand onboarding to your most reliable tech, and a week later you're untangling a mess: users are calling in because they don't know the…
Your Tier 1 Tech Has Been Stuck on That Ticket for 30 Minutes
Picture a reset-password ticket. Should take ten minutes.
Your Next Tech Starts in 90 Days. Here's the Plan You Write This Week.
You've hired the tech. The start date is set. And you have no written plan, which means they'll spend their first week following you around while you're…
What Every Client Needs Documented, and the Review That Keeps It True
It's 11pm, the on-call phone rings, and the ticket says 'printer down' for a client you've never touched.
The $52K Raise Request That Ended in a Farewell, and the Band That Would Have Kept It
Picture a Thursday. Your best T1, two years in, asks for a bump from 48k to 52k. You say no, or you stall, and by Friday they've updated their resume.
Catch Desk Problems Before the Client Does: One-to-Ones, Checklists, and a Same-Week Flag
You find out about a missed verification step on a password reset the same way you find out about most things: a client calls, annoyed, and asks why their…
Guides by Megan
Building a Client Onboarding Checklist: 90-Point Technical Onboarding SOP
You sign a new client, hand onboarding to your most reliable tech, and a week later you're untangling a mess: users are calling in because they don't know the…
Your Tier 1 Tech Has Been Stuck on That Ticket for 30 Minutes
Picture a reset-password ticket. Should take ten minutes.
Your Next Tech Starts in 90 Days. Here's the Plan You Write This Week.
You've hired the tech. The start date is set. And you have no written plan, which means they'll spend their first week following you around while you're…
What Every Client Needs Documented, and the Review That Keeps It True
It's 11pm, the on-call phone rings, and the ticket says 'printer down' for a client you've never touched.
The $52K Raise Request That Ended in a Farewell, and the Band That Would Have Kept It
Picture a Thursday. Your best T1, two years in, asks for a bump from 48k to 52k. You say no, or you stall, and by Friday they've updated their resume.
Catch Desk Problems Before the Client Does: One-to-Ones, Checklists, and a Same-Week Flag
You find out about a missed verification step on a password reset the same way you find out about most things: a client calls, annoyed, and asks why their…
Priority Inflation: Why 'Just Mark It Critical' Breaks Your Queue and Your Vendor Escalations
Picture a Monday where every client ticket arrives flagged urgent, and the techs spend the morning triaging instead of fixing.
The SOPs Worth Writing First Are the Tickets You Fix Ten Times a Week
It's Monday, the queue looks the same as last week, and you're about to walk a tech through the same password reset you've explained four times since Friday.
Fix the 'My Computer Is Slow' Ticket With an Intake Form and a 15-Minute Diagnostic Bundle
Stop guessing what 'slow' means. Build an intake form and diagnostic bundle so performance tickets arrive with the details your techs need to act fast.
Build a Dispatch Board That Stops Two Techs Driving to the Same Site
Picture Monday morning. Two vans pull into the same client parking lot, and both drivers are your techs.
Set Priority and Ownership in the First Two Minutes of a Ticket
Picture a Tuesday at 9am. A ticket lands on the board: "Email down for one user."
After-Hours On-Call Rotations That Don't Burn Out Your Techs
Picture a 2am alert for a non-critical issue, the third one this week.
Write the Scorecard Before the Job Advert Goes Out
You've hired on gut feel before. So has every owner who tells you they have a system now.
Your Knowledge Base Is Probably a Graveyard
If your techs don't read the knowledge base and don't write in it, the fix isn't more content.
Find Out Why Techs Actually Leave, and Keep the Next One
Picture the moment: a tech you trained walks into your office on a Tuesday and hands you a resignation letter. You had no idea it was coming.
Your Best Tech Just Got Promoted, and Everything Is Worse
You promote your best tier-two tech to lead, and within two weeks the desk is slower than it was before the promotion.
Write a Handover Note so the Client Never Repeats Themselves
The ticket lands in tier two with no context. The tech calls the client, asks what's already been tried, and the client starts the story from the beginning…
Onboarding a Client in 30 Days
A four-week MSP client onboarding plan: discovery and access in week one, the stack in week two, cleanup in week three, handover in week four.
Run Dispatch as a Shared Duty, Starting This Week
It's 4pm. A ticket has been sitting in your board for two days, nobody has touched it, and the client just emailed asking for a status.