Poor IT experience is often treated as an inconvenience. In enterprise environments, it can represent a persistent and material cost.
This case study examines how differences in employee experience with a single IT service—a legacy VPN—translated into significant differences in support demand, employee downtime, and annual operating cost across two Fortune 500 organizations.
The context
Two large enterprises were in the process of merging and integrating their respective IT environments. Both organizations operated at similar scale and complexity and relied heavily on VPN access to support a growing remote workforce.
While operational metrics provided visibility into ticket volumes and service performance, leadership lacked a clear, comparable view of how each VPN was actually experienced by employees—and what that experience was costing the business.
What was analyzed
Over four consecutive quarters, Voxxify analyzed experience and operational data across both organizations, including:
- Experience feedback from more than 100,000 employees
- VPN satisfaction scores collected through pulse surveys
- IT support ticket volumes associated with VPN usage
- Employee downtime linked to VPN-related issues
- Direct IT support and productivity costs
This enabled a like-for-like comparison between two VPN platforms operating under comparable conditions.
What the data showed
The results revealed a consistent and significant divergence.
Company A
- Consistently good VPN satisfaction scores
- Low and stable VPN-related ticket volumes
- Lower employee downtime and support costs
Company B
- Poor or very poor VPN satisfaction scores
- Significantly higher VPN-related ticket volumes
- Substantially greater employee downtime
When annualized, the difference between the two environments exceeded $1 million in total cost, driven by:
- Higher IT support costs
- Increased employee downtime
- Lost productivity associated with unreliable access
These costs accumulated quietly over time and were not immediately apparent from operational metrics alone.
Why this mattered
The VPN was not initially viewed as a strategic issue. It was familiar, longstanding, and managed operationally through the service desk.
What changed was visibility.
By examining experience data alongside ticket volumes and cost data, leadership was able to:
- Identify persistent experience-related cost drivers
- Distinguish structural issues from short-term incidents
- Quantify the financial impact of tolerating poor experience
- Prioritize remediation with confidence
Following remediation of the weaker VPN platform, the organization applied the same analysis approach to other productivity-critical IT services.
What this case demonstrates
This case study does not claim that experience data alone causes cost outcomes.
It demonstrates that:
- Poor IT experience consistently correlates with higher operational load
- Experience signals can reveal hidden cost that traditional metrics miss
- Even a single IT service can create material financial impact at scale
- Experience data becomes decision-grade when examined alongside operational and cost data
Download the full case study
The full case study includes quarterly comparisons, satisfaction trends, ticket volumes, and cost breakdowns across both organizations.
