It's 10:37 AM on a Wednesday. Sarah from accounting just submitted her third "Can't access the shared drive" ticket this month. Mike in operations is locked out of his email again. The new hire can't figure out the VPN for the fourth time this week.
Your IT provider fixes it. Every. Single. Time. And yet, like a bad sequel nobody asked for, the same tickets keep coming back.
Here's where the blame game usually starts: "Our employees need better training." Or worse: "Our IT company isn't fixing things properly."
Plot twist: It's neither.
After 25+ years working with Canadian businesses, I can tell you with absolute certainty, when the same IT tickets keep appearing, it's not a people problem. It's a systems problem, and understanding the difference could save your business tens of thousands of dollars in productivity losses and mounting frustration.
Let's start with some uncomfortable truth. According to Microsoft's 2023 Work Trend Index, employees lose an average of 57% of their workday to digital friction, struggles with technology that shouldn't be struggles at all.* ¹ That's not because your team is incompetent. It's because they're fighting systems that were never properly designed for how they actually work.
The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that 82% of security breaches involved a human element, but here's what doesn't make headlines: most of those "human errors" happened because security protocols were too complex, poorly implemented, or actively worked against productivity.*² When your VPN requires 17 clicks, three passwords, and a blood sacrifice to connect, people will find workarounds, and those workarounds create tickets.
But here's where it gets interesting. Businesses tend to blame one of two parties: their employees for "not learning" or their IT provider for "not fixing it right." Neither accusation holds water.
Your employees? They're doing their jobs. They didn't design the network architecture. They didn't choose the legacy software that won't play nice with modern tools. They're just trying to access a spreadsheet.
Your MSP? They're fixing exactly what you're asking them to fix. But here's the harsh reality: if you're only approving band-aid solutions because infrastructure upgrades "aren't in the budget right now," your IT provider is stuck putting out the same fires over and over again.
"Sound familiar? You're not alone, and there's a better way forward."
If recurring tickets are draining your team's time and patience, it's time to address the root causes. Book a free consultation with our team and we'll identify exactly what's creating these patterns in your IT environment, no obligations, just honest insights from 23+ years of experience helping Canadian businesses.
Remember that Windows Server 2012 sitting in your back office? The one that "still works fine"? It's creating tickets. Lots of them.
IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023 found that organizations using outdated systems experienced 18% longer resolution times for IT incidents.³ That's not because old technology is inherently bad, it's because modern software, security protocols, and user expectations have moved on. Your old systems are like trying to run a Tesla on leaded gasoline.
The tickets aren't coming from user error. They're coming from incompatibility. Your accounting software updated six months ago. Your server didn't. Now Sarah can't access the shared drive because the authentication protocols don't match. Your IT provider can force a connection, but it'll break again next update. Rinse, repeat, ticket.
Here's a conversation that happens in boardrooms across Canada every quarter:
"The network keeps going down." "Can we just... make it stop doing that?" "Well, we could replace the aging switches and implement redundancy, or we can keep restarting them when they fail." "What's cheaper right now?"
Congratulations, you just bought yourself 30 more tickets this year.
Gartner's research shows that reactive IT spending costs businesses 3-5x more than proactive infrastructure investment over a three-year period.*⁴ Every time you defer that network upgrade, that server replacement, that proper backup solution, you're not saving money. You're compounding interest on technical debt.
Your IT provider can absolutely keep resetting that switch. They'll do it cheerfully. But they can't fix a fundamental capacity problem with a reboot. The tickets will keep coming until someone approves the actual solution.
How many times has this happened: New software gets deployed company-wide. IT tests it. Works perfectly. Then users start reporting problems that can't be replicated in testing.
This isn't incompetence on anyone's part. It's the reality of complex systems. According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report, 44% of workers' core skills are expected to change by 2027, driven largely by technology adoption.*⁵ But here's what doesn't get budgeted: proper change management.
Rolling out new tools without user testing, documentation, training, and a feedback loop isn't an IT failure, it's a planning failure. Your employees aren't stupid; they're working in an environment where the left hand (IT implementation) doesn't know what the right hand (actual workflows) is doing.
Tickets emerge from this gap. "The new system won't let me do X" usually translates to "nobody considered this use case during deployment." That's not your IT provider's fault if they were never given time for a proper rollout.
Let's talk about the elephant in the server room: years of "make it work" solutions piled on top of each other like a Jenga tower made of duct tape and good intentions.
Ten years ago, you needed a quick fix for remote access. Someone set up a workaround. It worked. Then you added cloud storage. Then Microsoft 365. Then a new VoIP system. Then security compliance requirements. Each addition was layered onto that original workaround, which was never designed to handle any of this.
Now your VPN is held together with PowerShell scripts and prayer. The tickets aren't coming because users are doing anything wrong. They're coming because the foundation was never built to support what you're asking it to do today.
Statista reports that global spending on technical debt remediation reached $1.52 trillion in 2023.*⁶ That's not money spent on innovation, that's money spent untangling the consequences of deferred IT infrastructure decisions.
Here's the fundamental difference that most businesses miss:
Reactive IT Support: "My computer is broken. Please fix it." Strategic IT Partnership: "How do we build systems where computers don't break in the first place?"
Most businesses are paying for the first while wondering why they're not getting the second. The Government of Canada's Responsible AI & Cybersecurity Guidance emphasizes proactive system monitoring and predictive maintenance as core components of modern IT infrastructure.*⁷
When your relationship with IT is purely transactional, ticket in, fix out—you're not addressing root causes. You're treating symptoms. Your IT provider can absolutely monitor your systems, identify patterns, and propose preventive measures. But if those proposals keep getting shelved because "everything's working fine right now," the tickets will continue.
"How do I access the client portal again?"
This ticket appears 47 times per year in your system. Not because your employees have memory problems, but because the client portal was set up three years ago during a rushed deployment, nobody documented the process, the person who set it up left the company, and now institutional knowledge lives exclusively in Slack messages from 2022.
This isn't an employee training problem. It's not an IT support problem. It's a process documentation problem that requires time and budget to fix properly. Your MSP can absolutely create comprehensive documentation, if you give them the time and access to do it.
IBM Security's research shows that 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error.*⁸ The knee-jerk reaction? Make security more restrictive. Add more authentication steps. Require more complex passwords. Make the VPN harder to bypass.
And watch your ticket volume explode.
Here's what the data actually shows: overly complex security creates workarounds, and workarounds create vulnerabilities AND tickets. The solution isn't making things harder for users, it's implementing security that's both robust and usable. Single sign-on. Passwordless authentication. Risk-based conditional access.
But these solutions require investment. If you're just adding more password requirements because "it's free security," you're not improving security, you're creating ticket volume and user frustration.
These recurring ticket patterns are symptoms of deeper infrastructure issues. Our Managed IT Services go beyond break-fix support, we proactively monitor, maintain, and optimize your systems to prevent problems before they create tickets. Discover how strategic IT partnership can transform your operations.
Notice what all these root causes have in common? They're not solved by telling employees to "pay more attention" or by yelling at your IT provider to "fix it better." They're solved by strategic decisions that treat IT as infrastructure rather than as an expense.
The solution requires three things:
1. Leadership Buy-In for Proper Infrastructure Investment Stop deferring critical upgrades. When your IT partner says "this server needs replacement," that's not upselling, that's preventive maintenance. Calculate the cost of recurring downtime, lost productivity, and ticket resolution time. Compare it to the cost of doing it right. The math always favors investment.
2. Treating IT as a Strategic Partner, Not a Break-Fix Service Your MSP should be in your quarterly planning meetings. They should understand your business goals, growth plans, and operational workflows. They should be proposing improvements, not just responding to emergencies. If your current IT relationship is purely reactive, you're paying for a band-aid service and wondering why the wound won't heal.
3. Time and Resources for Proper Implementation Stop rushing deployments. Budget for training. Allocate time for documentation. Allow for user testing. Yes, this costs money upfront. It costs far less than years of recurring tickets and productivity losses.
The Microsoft Work Trend Index found that companies investing in proper digital infrastructure saw 34% fewer help desk tickets and 28% higher employee satisfaction.1 That's not magic—that's what happens when systems are designed properly from the start.
Your employees aren't creating the same IT tickets because they're forgetful or incompetent. Your MSP isn't generating repeat tickets because they can't fix things properly. The tickets keep coming because the underlying systems—shaped by years of deferred decisions, budget constraints, and reactive fixes, are creating problems faster than anyone can solve them.
The good news? Once you recognize this, the path forward becomes clear. It's not about blame. It's about partnership. It's about making strategic decisions that address root causes rather than symptoms.
After 25+ years working with Canadian businesses of all sizes, I can tell you this with certainty: companies that invest in proper IT infrastructure, treat their MSP as a strategic partner, and give their teams the tools and training they need don't have recurring ticket problems. They have IT systems that actually support their business goals.
The question isn't whether your employees or your IT provider are at fault. The question is: are you ready to fix the actual problem?
At Resitek, we've spent over 25 years helping Canadian businesses transform from reactive IT firefighting to proactive IT partnership. We don't just fix tickets, we identify why they're happening and propose real solutions. If you're tired of seeing the same issues month after month, let's talk about building IT infrastructure that actually works for your team.
1 Microsoft – Work Trend Index (2023)
2 Verizon – Data Breach Investigations Report (2023)
3 IBM Security – Cost of a Data Breach Report (2023)
4 Gartner – Generative AI Forecasts (2023–2024)
5 World Economic Forum – Future of Jobs Report (2020–2023)
6 Statista – Global AI Market Forecasts (2023)
7 Government of Canada – Responsible AI & Cybersecurity Guidance (2024)
8 IBM Security – Cost of a Data Breach Report (2023)