CX, communications platforms and what’s great next year
This time, we welcomed Michael Fauscette in our virtual, distributed studio. With him we discussed what will become 2021 trends, looked at his views on the best and worst buzzwords on the market, the role of CDPs and rather communications platforms and what an actually usable AI could be. Michael is a renowned analyst and author, with more than 20 years of experience in and around the CRM industry. He is the Chief Research Officer at G2, an analyst firm that bases that serves companies small to enterprise and that is unique in a sense that its analyses are based on customer feedback. Given that, our discussion of course touched his upcoming book (which sounds like it will be very readable) and the role of analysts — whether they are serving their purpose well and what could be improved. Us being all about CX, the meaning of CX cannot be forgotten. Did you always want to know what a business communications platform is and never dared to ask? Well, Michael has a good answer for you. And then there is photography. As usual – it is a conversation and might lead different directions. Did it? You find out!...
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...
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...