How Freshworks revamped employee experience for an entire company

As a rapidly growing software company at the forefront of AI and data analytics, Databricks needed a modern cloud IT service solution that would improve resolution times, establish stronger IT infrastructure, and scale easily and efficiently.

Previously, the company had used Zendesk and Spoke for ticketing but wanted a more cost-effective option. That’s when Databricks turned to Freshservice for IT service management (ITSM). Making the switch revamped the company’s overall IT service delivery: It quickened ticket resolution times and, by implementing self-service, helped deflect 23% of support tickets that agents would have otherwise handled.

After seeing the IT team’s success with Freshservice, other departments supporting employee service needs—such as HR, learning and development, legal, and security—became interested in achieving the same benefits with employee experience. Databricks soon expanded its Freshservice deployment from ITSM to enterprise service management (ESM).

Within three years, Databricks had 230 agents providing streamlined employee support with Freshservice, up from just 50 agents in its initial deployment in IT—a testament to the platform’s ability to scale and meet core objectives and needs.

With Freshservice, Databricks executives are better able to understand their existing IT infrastructure, forecast future needs, and make appropriate investments to keep improving employee experience.

The company

Databricks is an American enterprise software company founded by the creators of the popular open-source project Apache Spark. At the forefront of AI-centric data technology, Databricks helps over 7,000 companies build and deploy data engineering workflows, machine learning models, analytics dashboards, and more. The company surpassed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue in less than 10 years while redefining how companies access and analyze their data.

The challenge

Databricks needed to scale its IT service desk to improve efficiency and transparency for logging and resolving tickets. Initially using email and Slack to route IT requests from employees, the IT team struggled to keep pace with service tickets supporting an employee base of nearly 5,000. In addition to facing longer-than-desired resolution times, the IT team had trouble tracking infrastructure issues and managing service-level agreements (SLAs).

To address these challenges, Databricks sought to replace its IT delivery model with a scalable, unified ITSM platform. As a company at the forefront of AI and data analytics, Databricks was keen on finding an ITSM platform with AI capabilities to optimize IT investment decisions, deflect tickets, and help IT staff to work more efficiently.

The solution

After evaluating several ITSM platforms—including ServiceNow, Zendesk, and SolarWinds—Databricks chose Freshservice. “Freshservice’s no-code capabilities, automation features, and time to value made it the obvious choice for us,” says Pradeep Singh, Databricks vice president of infrastructure and operations. 

Using Freshservice’s self-service knowledge base, employees can quickly find answers to frequently asked questions, reducing the number of tickets the service desk handles. For more complex inquiries, employees can easily submit requests and track the progress of ongoing tickets with Freshservice’s easy-to-use portal.

Other departments at Databricks took notice of the IT team’s success, leading to an expansion to Freshservice for Business teams.

Now, Freshservice supports operations across the company’s HR, legal, security, and learning and development functions. Employees use a single self-service portal for all business functions—whether they need a new computer or have a PTO issue. Once submitted, the ticket is automatically routed to the right department’s workspace, with strict role-based permissions in place to protect confidential information.

Impact

Using Freshservice for ESM improved efficiency and scalability organization-wide. The ease of use of the product has led to high user adoption and productivity.

Building on the success of the new self-service features, Databricks plans to take greater advantage of Freshworks’ AI capabilities in the near future. “By implementing a clean data model foundation in Freshservice, Databricks achieved a 23% ticket deflection rate, thereby reducing manual touches and improving user experience,” says Pradeep Singh, vice president of infrastructure and operations. “Looking ahead, by implementing Freshservice’s AI capabilities, we are confident we can get that number to 50% or more.”

Using Freshworks in multiple departments has also helped Databricks lower IT costs. “Consolidating from multiple point solutions to a single unified platform for all employee services has not only improved the employee experience,” adds Singh, “it has saved us a significant amount of money by eliminating the need to deploy multiple solutions or versions of the same product.”

As Databricks maintains its rapid growth rate—the company grew more than 60% in 2023 to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue—Freshworks’ unified ESM solution stands ready to power its growth journey and continue to scale the business to new heights.