Company growth continues as businesses look for better ways to engage customers
Freshworks Inc., the customer engagement software company, announced its H1 2020 highlights, showcasing continued momentum during the pandemic. Freshworks’ Freshdesk Omnichannel product, which combines the power of customer support software with chat and telephony solutions, showed particular strength by doubling its ARR during the first half of 2020 — propelling the company further past the $200M ARR milestone announced earlier this year. During the period, Freshworks also provided access to free technology and expertise to small and midmarket/enterprise businesses to help combat the global pandemic, was listed as a CRM Watchlist winner, appointed key executive hires and entered into strategic partnerships with Tata Consultancy Services Limited and Slack Technologies, Inc. In addition, Freshworks was the only company named a Visionary in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center.*
“No one could have predicted the events that have unfolded during the past few months, yet Freshworks has continued to make progress in important areas,” said Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder of Freshworks. “Our business has been resilient, showing growth across our chat, telephony and customer support products that strengthen customer communications — a lifeline during these unprecedented economic times. Yet, our most important work has been ensuring the safety of our biggest asset – our employees – while helping businesses around the world solve their customers’ rapidly changing needs.”
Product Investment to Deliver Critical Business Value & Support
Freshworks’ chat, telephony and support software, led by Freshdesk Omnichannel, were highly sought after during the first half of this year as companies looked to manage spikes in both demand and support requests while working from remote locations. To help companies navigate this challenging time, Freshworks also made key announcements including: free use of its customer engagement tools, Freshchat and Freshcaller, to small businesses, assisting these companies as they transition to an all-remote workforce, setting up emergency hotlines for on-call service and adapting their operations through the crisis. Additionally, Freshworks provided a free version of the Freshchat platform to mid-market enterprises as they moved customer service online and dealt with surging ticket volume with remote or limited staff.
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Industry Recognition
Freshworks was recently named as the sole Visionary in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center* evaluated for its omnichannel customer support software, Freshdesk Omnichannel. The 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center report notes the increased role of AI, stating that “by 2025, customer service organizations that embed AI in their multichannel customer engagement platforms will elevate operational efficiency by 25%*.”
Freshworks’ unique people plus bots strategy builds on top of its helpdesk software, providing the only natively-integrated bots platform with both customer-facing and agent-facing AI capabilities. Additionally, Freshworks’ Freddy AI for customer experience democratizes AI and helps organizations easily deploy advanced automations without coding.
Freshworks was also named a winner of the 2020 CRM Watchlist. As part of the selection, industry experts indicated how Freshworks’ customer-centric “Customer for Life” mission statement differentiated it from other submissions and permeated the company’s marketing, sales, product, outreach and overall corporate strategy.
In addition, Freshworks introduced Freshsuccess and was noted by industry analysts as the only CRM vendor to add customer success software to its suite. This addition allows teams from marketing, sales, support and success to have a more holistic view of the customer and better anticipate and serve their needs, whether providing critical information during the sales cycle or predicting and proactively managing customer churn post sale.
Expanded Executive Bench
During H1 2020, Freshworks also added experienced senior executive leadership to guide continued growth and innovation strategies across finance, products and customer experience. Key appointments included:
- Tyler Sloat, the SaaS veteran from Zuora, Inc., as Chief Financial Officer
- Pradeep Rathinam, CEO of AnsweriQ Inc., as Chief Customer Officer
- Prakash Ramamurthy, a former Oracle executive, as Chief Product Officer
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Strategic Acquisitions and Partnerships
In January, Freshworks acquired AnsweriQ, a provider of machine learning and AI for larger enterprises. The acquisition 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. Freshworks can now further assist agents by automating routine processes for faster ticket handling while providing on the fly learning from conversations for quicker, more informed responses.
In H1 2020, Freshworks also completed its acquisition of Flint, a leading IT orchestration and cloud management platform, which bolsters Freshservice’s IT service management (ITSM) and IT operations management (ITOM) capabilities. With the acquisition, Freshservice provides greater IT team visibility to better manage hybrid infrastructures, optimize spend, and automate employee workflows.
Freshworks also announced its integration with Slack, the leading channels-based messaging platform, extending Freshworks’ customer engagement capabilities to Slack’s 12 million active daily users. This first-to-market customer support integration enables millions of Slack users to connect with businesses in the ways that suit their lifestyle instead of the limited and often inconvenient channels that are available.
Finally, Freshworks announced a strategic partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to enhance the end user and employee experience through new age sales, support, customer success and ITSM solutions.
Helping Combat the Pandemic
Freshworks’ employees and software have also been at the forefront of humanity’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic:
- StepOne, a telemedicine initiative in India, deployed Freshworks’ Freshdesk software to help over 6,500 verified doctors support over 3.5 million telemedicine calls spread across 9 states and 31 languages. Each week, the project identifies over 27,000 high risk cases and passes critical information to the respective state governments.
- Freshworks’ Freshchat technology was also used to build an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved healthbot now being used by health organizations and state governments across India — providing self-diagnosis at scale.
- Volunteers in England deployed free Freshdesk software to quickly respond to community requests for basic services like groceries, prescriptions and medical supplies.
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