Freshdesk becomes Freshworks – A Snap Analysis from Down Under
On June 6, 2017 Freshdesk announced its rebranding to Freshworks. Freshworks is a new umbrella brand for the suite of applications that Freshdesk built and acquired since its founding in 2010. The core statement by Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder of Freshworks is: ”Today, I’m happy to announce that we are rebranding the company as Freshworks. We’re not in this just to change the way businesses do customer support, but to refresh the way they do business.” Let’s have a look at select paragraphs of the press release. Following breakout growth of the company’s customer support software, and the introduction of new products for IT Service Management (“ITSM”), customer relationship management (“CRM”) and cloud-based call centers, Freshworks products are designed to help companies better engage and communicate with their customers and employees. The company surely had a significant impact on parts of the CRM market, also as evidenced by being named a CRM Watchlist Winner 2017 by industry luminary Paul Greenberg. They, in my eyes, however, do not yet have a CRM. A CRM encompasses marketing, sales, and service, supporting multiple channels/being channel agnostic and based upon analytics. Freshsales, what is referred to as their CRM, is a sales tool. “Today, the Freshworks suite of products includes: Freshdesk: a multichannel customer support helpdesk which allows organizations to collaborate and support their customers through email, phone, websites, forums and social media Freshservice: a cloud-based service desk and IT Service Management solution to address the growing complexity of teams’ IT support needs through a simple but powerful interface Freshsales: a full-featured CRM solution for sales teams handling high-velocity leads Freshcaller: a...
Helpshift to Salesforce Integration – Where Peanut Butter meets the Jelly
The leading in-app support company Helpshift just released a seamless integration with the Salesforce Service Cloud. This integration is now available on AppExchange. Here a copy of the press release for your convenience, followed by my analysis: Helpshift Announces New Integration Capabilities for Its Customers on the Salesforce AppExchange, the World’s Leading Enterprise Apps Marketplace SAN FRANCISCO – (BUSINESS WIRE) – MAY 25, 2017 – Helpshift today announced an integration with new capabilities available on the Salesforce AppExchange. This integration is meant to improve the mobile user experience by enabling service agents to deliver support to app users directly from within their Salesforce Service Cloud Dashboard – In-app! When a customer contacts support from inside the Helpshift-enabled app, a Salesforce case is created that the agent responds to, creating an in-app conversation. Customers get notified via banners, notifications and badges, enabling them to continue at their pace. “Organizations are seeing an explosion in demand for mobile solutions from their customers,” said Esteban Kolsky, president of thinkJar, a customer strategies advisory firm, “and they quickly realize they can’t offer outdated and incomplete solutions without real time data. Direct integration with systems of record are at the core of their strategies to support this trend.” Built on the Salesforce Platform, the Helpshift integration is now available on the Salesforce AppExchange. Enterprises can benefit in the following ways: In-app Messaging: Helpshift’s new integration capabilities allow existing Salesforce customers to provide support to mobile customers, which extends their ability to reach mobile customers where it matters: Directly in the app, and supported by the smartphones’ powerful notification mechanisms. Enhanced Knowledge Capabilities:...
GreenRope – A Simple yet Powerful CRM for E-Mail Marketers
A while ago I had the pleasure of talking with Austin Willms who took me through a tour presenting GreenRope, a CRM solution for small businesses that offers three ‘suites’ of functionality across ales, marketing, and operations. The operations suite probably needs a bit of explanation but is essentially the customer service portion plus functionality covering project- and event management, knowledge management, a wiki, collaboration and – important – the majority of contact management functionality. The Sales suite covers workflows, activities, leads, and contact handling and the marketing suite provides marketers with the tools they need to do their job. ‘Their job’ mainly being e-mail- and website-marketing, with some social media marketing added to it. This is something that GreenRope is particularly well geared for. The software has its origins as an e-mail marketing tool that evolved into a business suite of CRM-related tools that supports additional customer requirements. The objective behind it is to provide as many tools as possible in very affordable packages, while being able to support a nearly unlimited number of contacts. GreenRope has customers that run the solution for millions of contacts in their database. The philosophy behind GreenRope is that it shall make people effective, by allowing them to organize easily and efficiently. It is not necessarily there to serve as an immediately revenue generating tool. There is no preferred industry for GreenRope, although its ability to deal with millions of contacts shows a B2C affinity. This making it easy for users philosophy is also exhibited by GreenRope regularly sending mails that help in the onboarding process and the easily accessible and very...