How to Combat MSP Alert Fatigue
Managed service providers (MSPs) are responsible for monitoring hundreds or even thousands of devices, meaning that they must have a practical way of identifying incidents, vulnerabilities, and outages. The obvious choice is employing an incident alerting tool that can deliver alerts to the on-call engineers responsible for maintaining system health and performance. But no matter what method you are using for alerting, it is important that you are not overwhelming your MSP with irrelevant or non actionable alerts – subjecting them to alert fatigue.
What is alert fatigue & why should MSPs care?
Alert fatigue is the state of mental exhaustion due to the overwhelming volume of alerts from monitoring tools, ticketing systems, and incident response platforms that incident responders receive. For MSPs, alert fatigue can lead to slower response times, missed critical incidents, and increased burnout among technicians.
MSPs typically manage multiple environments for various clients, each generating its own set of system alerts ranging from performance warnings and downtime notifications to security events. When these alerts are not properly filtered and prioritized, teams may struggle to identify which issues require immediate attention. Over time, the constant alerts can cause technicians to ignore or delay responses, especially when they are so often false alarms, causing non-compliance with service-level agreements and disruptions to client satisfaction.
When does alert fatigue happen?
This phenomenon happens when teams responsible for managing critical systems are exposed to an abundance of alerts over an extended period of time. These alerts tend to stem from monitoring tools that aren’t preconfigured with effective alert thresholds, resulting in low-priority, redundant or false positives making it to the surface, inundating on-call teams with unactionable alerts. It is important for leaders to understand how to identify alert fatigue in their team members to ensure that they are preventing burnout and employee dissatisfaction.
What are the effects of alert fatigue?
Alert fatigue can have serious consequences for MSPs, impacting both technical performance and client satisfaction. So, teams must be aware of the effects of alert fatigue to better identify and prevent the problem.
Here are the most common alert fatigue symptoms in MSP environments:
Delayed response – As teams begin to ignore notifications, because of alert fatigue, it is more and more likely that important messages will slip through the cracks. This means that response to these incidents will be delayed, resulting in slower incident resolution and increased risk to client infrastructure.
Missed SLAs – Failing to act on critical alerts in time can lead to SLA violations, damaged client relationships, and potential revenue loss.
Technician burnout – Constant interruptions and stress from managing multiple alerts, that may not even be critical, can contribute to mental fatigue, reduced productivity, and higher turnover rates.
Decreased operational efficiency – Teams experiencing alert fatigue spend more time sifting through irrelevant alerts than focusing on proactive maintenance and strategic tasks.
Increased risk exposure – Ignored alerts can escalate into larger problems such as security breaches, data loss, or system outages.
Why do false positives happen?
False positives happen when a monitoring system incorrectly identifies a normal or low priority event as an urgent issue. For MSPs, false alarms are a major contributor to alert fatigue, as they create unnecessary noise that distracts technicians from real, actionable incidents.
Some of the most common reasons false positives occur in MSP environments are:
Overly sensitive thresholds – Monitoring tools may be configured to trigger alerts for minor fluctuations or non-critical behaviors, flagging normal system activity as an incident.
Out-of-the-box configurations – Default alert settings often don’t account for the unique needs or individual client environments, leading to unnecessary alerts.
Lack of context – When alerts are triggered based on isolated metrics without considering the broader system behavior, the tool may misinterpret temporary spikes as serious issues. Plus, technicians, without the whole picture, will be forced to investigate these spikes, causing delays and wasting time, especially when the alert was a non-issue.
Tool misconfigurations – Improper setup or outdated rules can result in alerts that no longer reflect the current state of the infrastructure.
Integration issues – When monitoring platforms and ticketing systems aren’t fully aligned, duplicate or misleading alerts can be generated
How to combat alert fatigue
Combating alert fatigue is essential for MSPs to maintain service quality, protect technician well-being, and meet client expectations. When alert fatigue sets in, teams become overwhelmed, response times slow down, and critical incidents may be missed. The key to preventing this is building a smarter, more streamlined alerting strategy.
Here are 8 proven ways MSPs can reduce alert fatigue:
Tune alert thresholds – Adjust alert settings based on client-specific baselines to avoid triggering alerts for minor or expected fluctuations.
Prioritize alerts – Use severity levels to distinguish between high and low priority incident alerts so that teams can respond accordingly.
Add context to alerts – Ensure that all alerts sent to technicians are context-rich so that they do not have to interpret the situation themselves and they can focus on resolving the issue at hand rather than figuring out what it is.
Implement escalation policies – Setup intelligent escalation rules so that the responsibility is not dumped onto one individual. If the primary engineer is already dealing with an incident or accidentally misses an alert, it will automatically escalate to the secondary person ensuring that the alert does not go unnoticed and response is not delayed.
Use alert suppression during maintenance windows – During maintenance windows and planned downtime, it is important to suppress alerts to prevent unnecessary noise that would further contribute to alert fatigue.
Regularly review and refine alerting rules – Conduct routine audits to remove outdated, redundant, or irrelevant alerts that no longer serve a purpose and only cause excessive noise.
Leverage incident alert management systems – Teams may be using monitoring tools that deliver alerts via email or SMS, but these are incredibly insufficient. Incident alert management tools are a must have, since they elevate only the most critical alerts and ensure that they are always dealt with through powerful on-call management and high-priority alerting functions.
Train and support your team – Provide clear processes for alert handling and ensure technicians understand which alerts require immediate attention.
How OnPage prevents alert fatigue
As previously mentioned, teams require an incident alert management tool, and OnPage is the go-to choice for multiple MSPs.
Some notable OnPage capabilities that reduce alert fatigue include:
Distinguishable Alerts – High-priority OnPage alerts are loud, distinguishable push notifications that are routed to the right technician every time based on on-call roles and responsibilities.
Digital On-Call Scheduling – With OnPage, teams can establish on-call schedules, enabling them to perfect their after hours coverage and automatically route monitoring system alerts to the person who is scheduled to be on call. Plus, teams can set up escalation policies that will enhance their reliability and ensure that no critical incidents are missed.
Override Do Not Disturb and Silent Switch – Critical OnPage alerts override Do Not Disturb and the silent switch, greatly reducing alert fatigue by allowing technicians to set their phone to silent, suppressing the irrelevant noise and elevating high-priority incidents.
Seamless Integrations – OnPage integrates with all of your existing systems, consolidating system alerts and providing engineers with access to them right on their mobile phone app.
Conclusion
Alert fatigue is one of the most persistent challenges facing MSPs today. With countless alerts pouring in from various client environments, it’s easy for teams to become overwhelmed, leading to missed incidents, delayed responses, and technician burnout.
However, alert fatigue isn’t inevitable. By tuning alert thresholds, consolidating alerts, customizing escalation paths, and regularly reviewing alerting rules, MSPs can regain control over their monitoring systems. These best practices not only reduce noise but also improve operational efficiency and client satisfaction.
In the competitive MSP industry, delivering responsible, reliable service is critical. Combating alert fatigue is a key step toward ensuring your team stays sharp, your clients stay protected, and your business continues to thrive.
