How Asplundh Saved Millions on Password Resets for 37,000+ Employees

The Challenge: $17 at a Time, 37,000 Times

Asplundh Tree Expert Co. employs over 37,000 people across North America — field crews, operations staff, and corporate employees spread across hundreds of locations. For an organization of that scale, the IT helpdesk is a critical lifeline. And for years, it was being overwhelmed by one of the most routine, preventable problems in enterprise IT: password resets.

Every time an employee forgot their password, got locked out, or couldn't access a work application in the field, they called the helpdesk. Each call cost approximately $17 in analyst time, overhead, and productivity loss. With tens of thousands of employees and a mobile, field-heavy workforce, those calls added up fast — hundreds of calls per day, millions of dollars per year.

The problem wasn't just cost. Employees locked out in the field couldn't do their jobs until IT resolved their issue. In a workforce where access to digital systems drives operational efficiency, every minute of lockout time had a real business impact beyond the helpdesk cost alone.

The Hidden Cost of Password Resets at Scale

Before quantifying the solution, the real scope of the problem had to be understood. When you map the $17 per call against a workforce of 37,000 — even conservatively assuming just a fraction of employees need a reset in any given month — the numbers become significant very quickly.

These numbers don't include the downstream costs: employee time lost waiting for resolution, supervisor time spent tracking the issue, or the operational impact of a field crew without system access. The total cost of each "helpdesk password call" was substantially higher than the $17 per call figure alone.

The Solution: MYID Self Verify + MYID Agent

SPS deployed two complementary MYID Self Verify capabilities for Asplundh's workforce:

smartphone

MYID Self Verify Mobile App

Deployed to Asplundh's 37,000+ employees, the MYID mobile app gave every employee the ability to reset their own password, unlock their own account, and update their profile — from their phone, in seconds, with no IT involvement. A field worker locked out at 5am can resolve their own issue before the helpdesk even opens.

MYID Agent — AI-Powered Account Troubleshooting

For employees who needed guided assistance, MYID Agent provided a conversational AI interface for account troubleshooting. Instead of waiting on hold, employees could describe their issue in plain language and have it resolved automatically — or escalated to IT only when genuinely necessary.

The combination meant that the vast majority of password and account issues — the ones that had been driving helpdesk call volume for years — never reached a human analyst. The helpdesk was freed to focus on issues that actually required specialist expertise.

Before and After

The Results

Beyond the direct cost savings, the qualitative impact was significant. Employees in the field — the core of Asplundh's workforce — no longer had to interrupt their work day waiting for IT assistance with routine account issues. The helpdesk team's morale improved as they shifted away from repetitive ticket handling to work that genuinely required their expertise.

MYID Self Verify also introduced account lockout notifications — a capability Asplundh had not previously had. When an employee's account is locked, they now receive an immediate alert showing where the lockout originated, allowing them to identify suspicious activity instantly rather than discovering it when they try to log in the next morning.