The Silent Margin Leak: Michelle Coombs on the Red Flags Every MSP Walks Past

🎙️ Pitch IT 2026 | Michelle Coombs, Oprising — "It works, don't change it" is quietly costing you money Meet the woman who compares herself to Pinky and the Brain (depending on the day) — and who's on a mission to help 350,000 people in the channel do better work. In this episode of The Vendor Blender's Pitch IT 2026 series, Paul Croker sits down with Michelle Coombs of Oprising, who started her career on a "log and flog" service desk — fixing printers on her breaks while still on the phones, back before RMM tools even existed. Doing it the hard way taught her something about great service that still holds true today… and it's the reason she's now building something to help the whole industry level up. Here's what you'll want to hear: The silent margin leak — the early warning signs your service desk is bleeding money before the complaints and escalations ever hit your inbox. Reopened tickets, bouncing agents, hidden bottlenecks… Michelle names the red flags most owners walk straight past. Why "but it works" is a trap — and why the person brave enough to ask "why do we do it this way?" gets treated like a troublemaker (when they're actually saving you). The consultancy lightbulb moment — the exact tipping point where Michelle realised she was writing the same action plan for every client, and decided to stop selling the fish and start teaching people to grow it. The department everyone forgets — why continual improvement dies in a silo, and the HR, finance and offboarding gaps that quietly bite MSPs. Plus, Michelle bravely admits her biggest challenge (the "post and run" trap so many of us fall into) and reveals the bouncy early-2000s banger she's adding to the Pitch IT Spotify playlist. 🎵 Repeatable expertise sitting in your head right now? This one's for you. Grab a cuppa and hit play. ☕🤘