CRMKonvo – Freshworks on Platform, CRM and useful AI
Freshworks has is now officially a fresh (sorry, I really couldn’t resist this pun) member of the club of platform players. The company introduced its own flavour of CRM and a platform that they build upon. What is next? Lot’s of ground to cover. A CRKKonvo with Prakash Ramamurthy, Chief Product Officer, Peter Stadlinger, Head of Products CRM and David Krauss, Senior Director Product Marketing at Freshworks. ogether with Marshall Lager, Ralf Korb and Thomas Wieberneit they discuss market perspectives, what the value for customers is and how the innovations that the team has recently introduced fit in there. Prakash, Peter, and David bring a wealth of knowledge to the conversation, including a pretty interesting dive into how to train an AI based upon the idea that the human who is in front of the machine is still one of the most important trainers, due to tacit knowledge and wisdom that cannot be codified. Which also explains the trifecta of priorities that Freshworks follows with its CRM: UI/UX firstAI that actually worksnative customer 360 It is also about value, where we do a short deviation towards pricing and, of course, platform. Enjoy a fascinating discussion with empathic points...
CRMKonvos – Someone who went out excitedly to find Customer Experience
In this episode we welcomed Lars Brodersen, author, publisher, and long time CRM expert. Lars is the author of the customer manifesto, which he wrote as a reaction to a series of pretty unsettling customer experiences, starting from soured milk in his Latte Macchiato followed by an I don’t care attitude of the waitress via a horribly wrong order confirmation by a car rental agency, a new appliance breaking and the repair service being an awful long time away, or the electrician being available only after various attempts and a long awaited for package finally being lost. It is the story of someone who moved out, just to find traumatic experiences. All in all, nothing that we haven’t experienced. Yet, he reacted differently, by writing the customer manifesto, which emphasises on one simple truth: Companies are there to serve the needs of their customers. This is their sole reason of existence. This “earned” Lars a spot in our CRMKonvos, with us talking about this, his books and what CRM is or should be. Listen in to some worthwhile...
Freshworks officially cool now in the club of platform vendors
A few days ago, together with a group of fellow analysts, I was invited to attend the 2020 Freshworks analyst days that covered a lot of ground from corporate vision through strategy and of course, some announcements for the Freshworks Refresh 2020 Global Virtual Conference. These announcements came shortly after the company appeared in the fourth Gartner Magic Quadrant for 2020 and after being ranked #16 in the 2020 Forbes Cloud 100 list. All this clearly shows some ambition – and success. As you may be aware by now, these announcements included Neo, the new Freshworks platform and the new Freshworks CRM product. These two topics created the most discussion points between the Freshworks executives and the analysts. Of course, these two announcements were supported by statements on the corporate vision, mission and current standing as well as product vision. Impressive customer testimonials were not missing, too. My Take This I need to divide into three sections, one about the event itself, one about strategy and one about the new products. Let me start with the analyst day itself. The Analyst Day Of course it was a fully virtual event, thanks to Covid-19. The “day” was split into two sessions of four hours each across two days. Each day was closed with a social gathering after the content sessions, where we could talk shop or just banter, having a drink. This was akin t the lobby talk that one has during breaks or after a day full of information. All sessions were live. There haven’t been any canned statements. Questions that were asked via the chat during the various...