Freshworks Acquires AnsweriQ, Targeting Larger Businesses with Enterprise Scale AI Customer Service Offerings

By AIT News Desk On Feb 27, 2020

AnsweriQ CEO Pradeep Rathinam Joins Freshworks as Chief Customer Officer to Maximize Customer Success

Freshworks Inc., the customer engagement software company, announced the acquisition of AnsweriQ Inc., a provider of ML and AI for larger enterprises that want to better serve their customers. AnsweriQ complements Freshworks’ AI engine, Freddy, by enabling enterprise organizations to fully leverage their existing customer data to scale self-service experiences and automate complex customer workflows. AnsweriQ’s unique ML models leverage AI algorithms against millions of customer interactions to generate automated self-service Q&As and improve next-step escalations.

AnsweriQ’s technology augments Freddy’s AI capabilities and helps scale self-service for large enterprises. Freddy will incorporate AnsweriQ’s AI to learn from ticket data and agent actions within the Freshworks Customer-for-Life Cloud and improve customer self-service capabilities. Freddy will extend its capabilities from a knowledge base dependent AI engine to learn from ticket conversations on the fly. Freddy will be able to anticipate customer needs, make recommendations for agents based on the conversations and perform tasks such as refunds and cancellations with no manual input required—significantly improving customer self-service and freeing up agent time to handle more complex requests.

Freshworks also announced that AnsweriQ CEO Pradeep Rathinam has joined the senior executive team as chief customer officer, aligning the weight of the entire organization towards successful outcomes for businesses that keep and grow customers for life. In his new role, Rathinam will align the entire organization to make customers powerful advocates for Freshworks by delivering successful business outcomes. He will oversee the company’s global customer support, onboarding and customer success organizations, further increasing satisfaction, retention and success of the combined customer base, including AnsweriQ customers 2K Games, Freshly and SeatGeek.

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For example, companies such as SeatGeek use AnsweriQ’s AI solution to triage incoming cases and assist customer service agents with suggested answers. Freshly uses AnsweriQ’s intelligent process automation solution (RoboAssist) to improve customer experiences by reducing handle time from six minutes to 30 seconds for order modifications and cancellations.

“Unlike clunky, siloed, legacy SaaS solutions, Freshworks is innovating to deliver a powerful and seamless experience across sales, marketing, customer success and support functions,” said Pradeep Rathinam, former AnsweriQ CEO and Freshworks Chief Customer Officer. “With Freshworks’ commitment to deploying enterprise-scale AI to better understand customers and build relationships for life, this acquisition is a natural fit. I’m excited to join Freshworks as their new chief customer officer as we create delightful experiences for enterprises that use our products worldwide.”

“The integration of AnsweriQ’s technology enhances our AI/ML capability in the customer engagement space and offers significant value to our customers,” said Girish Mathrubootham, Freshworks’ founder and CEO. “Pradeep brings executive-level acumen and expertise, which will be leveraged in his new role as chief customer officer as we double-down on our efforts to engage and keep customers for life.”

The acquisition is Freshworks’ second in less than a year and comes on the heels of nearly 60% year-over-year growth in billings for the company, fueled by widespread industry recognition (including No. 40 on the 2019 Forbes Cloud 100 List and the December 2019 Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer” for IT Service Management Tools report*). AnsweriQ’s Seattle office expands Freshworks’ U.S. footprint from San Mateo, Calif., and Denver to the Pacific Northwest tech center, providing another rich talent hub to draw from.