How Ryan Specialty delivers first-class support

In a specialty insurance brokerage, executives set an unusually high bar for customer service. VIP clients pay significant sums in uniquely risky industries like energy and construction. Brokerages must deliver a high-quality experience that yields tangible results.

For Ryan Specialty, legacy IT ticketing systems triggered fears about subpar customer service. Leaders wanted to guarantee white-glove standards and prevent disorganized ticket communications from traveling downstream to the customer—which would undermine confidence in their top-tier services.

After going public in 2021, Ryan Specialty aimed to fix known support issues, but the recent IPO meant they had to consider all compliance standards before changing digital processes. Ryan Specialty consolidated six support teams and equipped customer-facing staff with Freshservice, Freshdesk, and Freshchat.

“We needed a tool that would allow us to deliver white-glove customer support at scale,” says Frank Servidio, Ryan Specialty’s vice president of technical support services. “Once we dove into Freshworks, we realized it was the ideal solution.” 

The company

Ryan Specialty, a Chicago-based international specialty insurance firm with over $110 million in annual revenue, delivers customized insurance solutions to brokers, agents, and insurance carriers. The business focuses on niche markets, such as commercial marine, construction, and energy production, that are often underserved by conventional insurance providers.

The challenge

Ryan Specialty’s prior cloud-based helpdesk solution caused frustration for the company’s two unique audiences: internal employees (underwriters) and external customers (insurance agents). 

When Brian Watson was brought on as Ryan Specialty’s IT change manager, he found another problem: The helpdesk tool lacked change-management capabilities that were critical for the transition to a public company structure. 

To deliver a great customer experience while helping the company navigate post-IPO changes, Ryan Specialty needed to consolidate its support tools on a true do-it-all platform: a flexible helpdesk solution with IT ticketing and change-management capabilities. 

With six internal and customer-facing support teams overseeing multiple applications, Ryan Specialty needed easy and efficient data-sharing across teams to speed up issue resolution. Executives also wanted to improve customer experience by designing multiple data entry points, custom solutions, and user-friendly applications.

The solution

Ryan Specialty had several priorities when moving to the Freshworks platform:

• Implement a helpdesk solution that could support IT change management

• Deliver a high-end customer experience that met high expectations for client support

• Consolidate IT service and support solutions on a single unified platform

With Freshservice and Freshdesk, Ryan Specialty made service workflows much more organized and transparent. Those improvements helped support agents optimize their time and become better-equipped to handle daily tasks. Agents and team leaders also gained the ability to track escalation paths and had greater visibility into status updates.

“One major benefit in just the first few weeks was how much easier we were able to track the ticket escalation process,” says Servidio. “We can now instantly see what tickets are reassigned and to whom, allowing us to identify any trends that may need to be addressed to lower resolution times.”

Impact

With Freshworks, Ryan Specialty has united multiple teams with a consolidated support solution. Customers have clearly felt the impact: The company achieved a 4.96 CSAT score—an increase of 20%—just two months after implementation. 

All tickets come through Freshdesk and automatically route to Freshservice if the issue is internal, thanks to a custom integration. Now, 75% of tickets are one-touch—resolved with a single reply—while chats are typically resolved in just 3.5 minutes.

By boosting customer happiness and making IT service operations more efficient with the unified Freshworks platform, Ryan Specialty has laid the foundation for sustained, long-term success.