How MongoDB transformed its internal support with Zendesk and SweetHawk
MongoDB serves 37,000 customers across 100+ countries with a team of 4,400 employees. When their internal Sales and HR support teams were operating out of shared Google Workspace inboxes with no metrics, no SLAs, and no task management, they turned to Zendesk, then layered SweetHawk's apps on top to close the workflow gaps that mattered most.
MongoDB is the world's most popular modern database platform, trusted by over 37,000 customers in more than 100 countries and built by a global team of 4,400 employees. At that scale, every internal support interaction has a real impact on productivity, whether it's an HR request, a sales operations task, or an IT ticket.
Before Zendesk, MongoDB's internal Sales and HR support teams ran out of a shared Google Workspace inbox. Leadership called it a "black box experience." There were no SLAs, no agent workload visibility, and reporting meant stitching together CSV exports by hand. Zendesk gave them a platform. SweetHawk gave them the workflow, task management, and automation needed to actually scale on it.
The challenge
MongoDB's internal support operation had outgrown its tooling. Tickets lived in shared inboxes, reports were assembled manually from multiple CSV files, and leadership had no way to see how teams were actually performing.
- No metrics, no SLAs, and no agent workload visibility for leadership
- A "black box" experience for both employees raising requests and the agents fielding them
- Manual reporting, with data pulled from multiple CSV files every time a dashboard was needed
- No way to structure multi-step business processes inside a support request
"Without Zendesk, there were limited metrics, which meant there were limited SLAs for leadership to review. Information on agent workload and ticket volume were non-existent for some teams, making it very difficult to scale."
Joe Stafford, Director of IT, MongoDB
Where SweetHawk added value
Zendesk solved the transparency problem. But MongoDB quickly identified gaps that stock Zendesk couldn't fill, particularly around structured task management, scheduled work, and granular permissions across very different teams like Sales, HR, IT, and beyond.
SweetHawk's Super Suite plugged directly into those gaps. Instead of forcing each team onto the same rigid workflow, MongoDB could tailor task lists, subtasks, recurring work, and permissions on a per-group basis, all without leaving Zendesk.
"We realised that there were some gaps for our teams using Zendesk. Task management was a big one, like using the platform to add business processes to a particular incoming support request. SweetHawk's ability to add tasks and subtasks was crucial for us."
John Dahl, Business Systems Engineer, MongoDBStructured workflows inside every ticket
With the Tasks app, MongoDB's agents can attach multi-step checklists and subtasks to any incoming request, enforcing that the right steps happen in the right order before a ticket resolves. That turned Zendesk from a messaging tool into a genuine process engine for HR onboarding, IT provisioning, and cross-functional sales operations.
The team layered in Recurring Tickets on top, generating 100+ scheduled tickets automatically for the work that has to happen every week, month, or quarter. Nothing falls off a checklist because it isn't on anyone's calendar anymore.
Fine-grained control for very different teams
Rolling out a single platform across HR, Sales, and IT usually means compromise, where one team gets what it needs while the others settle. MongoDB needed the opposite: granular control over which apps, features, and workflows were visible to each group.
"The SweetHawk integration was very straightforward and allowed a high level of customisation. I love the fact that we are able to easily set individual permissions and individual access for specific groups, which was critical for us. We now have the power to determine what apps are needed for each specific group within MongoDB."
Nang Nguyen, Business Systems Analyst, MongoDB
Feedback loops that drive real change
Because every workflow step now lives inside a ticket, and every ticket generates data, MongoDB's team leaders can look back across a quarter and see exactly where agents are getting stuck, which process steps are slowing things down, and what to change next.
"With SweetHawk, we can now tie into the complete employee experience. Agents can now provide feedback in terms of the workflow. IT then allows team leaders to analyse that data and create actionable items for the upcoming quarter."
Joe Stafford, Director of IT, MongoDBThe results
The combination of Zendesk's visibility and SweetHawk's workflow depth transformed MongoDB's internal support from a reactive inbox into a measured, scalable operation.
- 91% NPS and 91% CSAT across teams using the platform
- 70% of tickets resolved in a single touch, thanks to structured workflows and clear task ownership
- 100+ automated recurring tickets replacing manual calendar reminders and ad-hoc requests
- 600 help centre articles feeding a true self-service experience
- One-click dashboard sharing, replacing hours of manual CSV reporting
- Per-group permissions letting Sales, HR, and IT run the workflows that suit them
"The overall success of our initiative to enhance the customer experience can be attributed directly to Zendesk."
Joe Stafford, Director of IT, MongoDB
For MongoDB, the real unlock wasn't any single feature. It was being able to shape the platform around each team's needs without fragmenting the data underneath. SweetHawk's apps gave them the building blocks to do that, and the results speak for themselves.