thomas.wieberneit@aheadcrm.co.nz
CRMKonvo – Freshworks on Platform, CRM and useful AI

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...
Customer Experience is the way! But where is its value?

Customer Experience is the way! But where is its value?

These days, everyone, including myself, is talking about a great experience being the new differentiator. About product, and service being less and less of a factor distinguishing businesses. There is talk of customer experience, user experience, brand experience, product experience, consumable experiences, but mostly this is summed up under the umbrella of customer experience. With this, of course, businesses are reacting with creating customer experience initiatives, building strategies, and implementing solutions, from customer journey orchestration via 1 to 1 marketing solutions, or voice of customer programs. The result is significant investment and CEOs being convinced that their customers have a very good experience. Just that their customers tend to not agree to this assessment, which leads to a considerable experience gap. Abbildung 1: Experience Gap. Source Qualtrics What is the experience gap? At the end of the day, it is the mismatch between brand and product promise and delivery to these promises. This experience gap is a strong indicator that something is at odds with the assessment of the own performance. This might be a consequence of wrong KPIs, wrong measurements or, in the worst case, a wrong or failed strategy. It might also simply be a matter of confusing all these terms, that I mentioned above. So, let’s start with putting some stake in the ground by doing some definition work. Brand Experience On Techtarget we can read that brand experience “is a type of experiential marketing that incorporates a holistic set of conditions created by a company to influence a feeling a customer has about a particular product or company name.“ This is a very inside-out definition,...
The Demo, the 7P of Planning, and Customer Experience

The Demo, the 7P of Planning, and Customer Experience

Being a consultant being called into or asked to do a product demo is inevitable. A demo is one of the most powerful tools that product/solution vendors and their partners have in their arsenal to convince prospects. The demo is a key part of the customer journey that the buyer of enterprise software takes. A good experience in this step will establish the trust that is necessary to go any further with a vendor and/or implementation partner. A great demo can make an underdog a winner while a poor demo can make the frontrunner an outright loser. Well, and sometimes the underdog’s killer demo scores them only the second place in a winner-takes-it-all world. I have seen and done that on both sides of the table, given good and bad demos, sat as a customer or trusted adviser, attending bad to great demos. And it is always amazing to see and participate. One thing is for sure: If you get into the make or break position of a competitive demo in a short list, you better remember The 7 P of Planning Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Know thy customer; and know her well. Who is part of the buying center? Who decides? Who influences who? Who has the money? What are their likes and dislikes? What are their interests? What do they want to achieve? What do they expect to see? How can I surprise/wow them? Who is my friend? These are only some of the more important questions that you need to get answers for before the demo. Other ones include answering how important this...