At Refresh Europe 2025, the message was unambiguous: The complexity of enterprise IT is stifling productivity, and simplification is no longer optional; it’s a strategic imperative. Speaker after speaker emphasized that the modern CIO is no longer just a custodian of infrastructure. They are also architects of the employee experience, now judged not by SLAs but by the moments that matter — the last-mile interactions where users form their perceptions of IT.

This last mile, whether it’s a password reset or a seamless onboarding journey, is where IT either builds trust or loses it. Employees don’t remember systems; they remember how systems make them feel. The conference made it clear: Businesses can’t afford to frustrate users with fragmented tools and convoluted processes. With over a thousand tools in use in some enterprises, the operational burden is massive. Yet ironically, adding more systems in the name of productivity often leads to diminished returns and increased security risk.

Freshworks and its partners offered a roadmap for change: Simplify aggressively, reduce tool sprawl, and center IT around intuitive, responsive, and empathetic service experiences.

Freshworks’ Focus On AI And Simplification In ITSM

Freshworks drove home its vision of transforming IT service management (ITSM) through automated, intuitive employee experiences powered by its Freddy AI. Built into Freshservice, Freddy supports seamless ticket summarization, multilingual assistance, knowledge article generation, and suggested next-best actions.

But how does this compare to industry peers? The competitiveness of ITSM today hinges on seamless AI integration and out-of-the-box governance. Freshworks is clearly catching up in AI capabilities, especially with no-code Freddy agents. Its distinct advantage lies in packaging robust, rapid-deployment features at a lower entry cost and targeting the midmarket while market leaders aim at large-enterprise complexity.

Experience-Led ITSM: XLAs Vs. Traditional SLAs

A key shift highlighted at Refresh Europe was the pivot from service-level agreements (SLAs) to experience-level agreements (XLAs), moving beyond uptime to measure how users feel about IT interactions and then embedding continuous feedback loops.

Major vendors are racing to align with this trend. Freshworks is firmly in step, integrating multilingual Freddy agents, experience-level triggers, and unified HR/IT onboarding, all enabled by its recent acquisition of Device42 and the embedding of Freddy into Freshservice. Freshworks may not be leading here, but it is strategically competitive, aligning with the broader industry shift toward emotional metrics.

ITSM Automation

The market’s leaders are converging ITSM with enterprisewide workflows, embracing hyper-automation, human-in-the-loop approval, identity governance, security orchestration, and HR/procurement automation. Automation through AI significantly enhances efficiency across various business functions. HR processes benefit from automated onboarding, offboarding, and communication workflows, reducing inefficiencies and compliance risks while providing personalized experiences for new hires. ​In customer support, AI agents handle routine and complex queries across multiple channels, freeing up human agents to focus on high-value tasks and improving customer satisfaction. ​Additionally, purpose-built AI solutions for smaller businesses simplify operations and accelerate growth, showcasing the transformative impact of automation in streamlining processes and driving scalability. All this demonstrates that AI automation is no longer limited to IT.

By simplifying deployment and avoiding overcustomization, Freshworks positions itself as a lean, agile alternative to heavyweight platforms such as ServiceNow or BMC Helix. Freshworks isn’t the innovation leader, but its approach smartly balances AI automation with low operational overhead, aiming to outpace competition in usability.

Is Freshworks Leading Or Following?

Freshworks is highly competitive, particularly for midmarket companies seeking AI-driven service management at an enterprise level of speed and cost. With sophisticated Freddy agents, Device42-powered IT asset management, and a push toward XLAs, it matches many industry trends head on. Yet in sheer breadth, cross-functional orchestration, global identity governance, and large-enterprise complexity, Freshworks mirrors these innovative trends but with a sharp midmarket focus, avoiding the bloat associated with mega-platforms.

In this race, Freshworks isn’t the fastest or most feature-heavy, but it is the strategically streamlined product offering intelligent AI, modern experiences, and rapid deployment — catching up fast, especially in experience-led and AI-first service, and poised to overtake legacy incumbents in agility and value. Freshworks should continue to strengthen hyper-automation beyond IT, adding deeper analytics around AI ROI, governance, and identity. It should also highlight XLA success metrics to fully claim the experience-led mantle.

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