Most MSPs measure performance the same way: tickets closed, response time, utilization. Those numbers are easy to track – but they don’t tell you whether clients are actually better off. SVAM International’s Matthew Lang, Director, Cybersecurity Practice, addressed this directly in a recent ChannelPro Network feature on MSP team performance evaluation, alongside leaders from Thrive, Charles IT, Iron Nebula, and ITCon.
The case against speed as the only metric
Lang’s contribution centered on how MSPs evaluate security and client-facing roles — where the value delivered often doesn’t show up in the metrics leadership is watching.
On client success functions, he noted that a strong client success person may prevent an escalation, uncover a risk, or preserve a relationship months before that value is visible in any report.
On security technicians specifically, Lang pushed back on speed-based scoring: closing an alert quickly isn’t valuable if the underlying threat was misunderstood. His view is that a technician who takes the extra time to ask the right questions and reach a defensible conclusion is doing better work than one optimizing for closure rate – even if the numbers say otherwise.
Why this matters
The piece makes a broader point that applies across the industry: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a useful measure. For MSPs and MSSPs, that means evaluating people on judgment, documentation, and risk reduction — not just how fast a queue moves.
At SVAM, this thinking shapes how our cybersecurity practice operates day to day. Read the full article for perspectives from Lang and other MSP leaders on building performance frameworks that hold up under real conditions.