Alterra Mountain Company unifies 11 helpdesks

Alterra Mountain Company prides itself on offering one-of-a-kind experiences at each of its 18 mountain resorts in the American West and Canada. But this individuality created operational silos when it came to resolving company-wide IT service tickets. 

Without a unified system, many of the individual resorts had their own IT ticketing systems. This meant that once a ticket was escalated to the corporate level, there was no streamlined way to track updates and ensure the issue was resolved. 

Instead of relying on agents to manually update ticket progress—time-consuming during the busy ski season—Alterra sought a solution to bring IT tickets under one umbrella. In deploying Freshservice, Alterra united its service workflows and standardized its resolution-time service-level agreements (SLAs) across the network of resorts. The solution has been so successful that other departments began onboarding to the platform, bringing a culture of collaboration and cohesion to the entire organization. Now that Alterra has achieved faster resolution times thanks to the efficient solution, employees can focus on creating memorable guest experiences.

The company

Alterra Mountain Company operates 18 hospitality destinations for recreation, food and beverage, and retail across North America. Each location offers a unique outdoor experience year-round, whether skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, or hiking.

The challenge

A complex and disjointed infrastructure hindered Alterra's IT support operations. The company relied on a patchwork of 11 different systems to manage support tickets, resulting in inefficiencies and inconsistencies. Resort-specific SLAs lacked uniformity, making it difficult to establish and maintain consistent service levels across the organization. The absence of a centralized platform provided limited visibility into IT operations, a necessity to identify bottlenecks, allocate resources effectively, and measure performance. 

“You can imagine how stressful this was during the busy ski season,” says Christy Cooper, senior IT operations analyst. “Our IT resources and time were not being used efficiently, and we knew we had to break these silos.”

The prospect of implementing a unified service desk to address these issues was complicated by the fact that Alterra operated in 18 geographically dispersed locations, each with its own unique set of challenges and requirements. The IT team wanted a new ticketing system that would integrate service desk operations across locations and standardize ticket management processes.

The solution

Alterra chose Freshservice to unify its 11 service desks. Its intuitive interface was easy for both agents and end users, and allowed for smoother collaboration between departments and locations. Now, an agent from a local resort could escalate a ticket simply by tagging the relevant department, adding a note to the ticket, or starting a quick chat conversation. Each resort maintained its autonomy while working closely with headquarters on complex requests. 

Consolidating 18 service desks would never be a simple, overnight operation, but Freshservice was easy and straightforward. Within weeks, Freshservice had been implemented without the need for extensive developer involvement. Cooper credited the responsiveness of the Freshworks team: “Our onboarding specialist was outstanding,” she says. “Together, we collaborated with every single resort to ensure that they retained their uniqueness and that their needs were met.”

Freshservice has enabled Alterra to speed up the resolution of customer issues and focus on delivering exceptional guest experiences. The company is planning to consolidate on a single technology and aims for Freshservice to become the central hub where employees can submit all requests. This shift is expected to significantly enhance overall productivity and efficiency, especially in change management. Cooper says that Freshservice is “very easy to configure; I don’t need four developers each time I need to make a change.”

Impact

By dismantling the operational silos within each resort and unifying 11 service desks, Alterra has seen improvements in issue resolution, increased efficiency, and consistently exceeds guest expectations.

Alterra now has over 400 workflows for all of its resorts combined, automating tasks and routing tickets more efficiently. The IT team remains the primary user of Freshservice, but as the solution becomes more entrenched, the company has expanded the solution to more departments, including expense management, accounts payable, and facilities management. 

Freshservice has also fostered a closer-knit working environment. Agents at local resorts can now seamlessly escalate tickets to corporate headquarters by tagging relevant departments, adding notes, or initiating chat conversations. The IT team reports increased interaction and greater visibility into the work of other departments. 

Ultimately, Alterra measures success by enhancing the overall guest experience. With Freshworks, guests have their issues resolved quicker and easier—so they can get back to enjoying all that a mountain resort provides.