KUALA LUMPUR: A purpose-built IT, customer support, sales and marketing software company, Freshworks is on a mission to empower the people who power business with its 'Global Jam' – a two-month tour of events in 25 cities across five continents – to bring together leaders in customer experience, IT, sales, marketing and operations.
"Our Modern, Unified, Scalable, Intuitive, and Cost-Effective solutions and services are MUSIC to our customers' ears," said Freshworks' chief marketing officer, Stacey Epstein, adding that only Freshworks brings together the five essential attributes into one seamless platform "...that will enable attendees to stay on the beat of current trends".
Its chief customer officer Pradeep Rathinam explained that the sessions allow participants to explore strategies for "delivering fast and easy delightful experiences, win over customers and employees alike, accelerate sales and take IT to new heights" as well as meet, engage and build relationships with other customer-facing and IT leaders in their own community.
FOR BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The word experience covers everything from navigating a website, to how easy (or difficult) it is to reach a salesperson, to the way a product is packaged, to the availability of parking spaces, to how friendly the employees are, and beyond. It includes everything.
Recognising the importance of an amazing customer experience, Freshworks' head of sales (Asean) Johny Stephen shared the basics.
"Consistency is one of the hallmarks of customer service and customer experience. People want the product to work and they want the experience to be the same, every time. Consistency creates confidence, which turns into repeat business – and maybe even loyalty.
Next is convenience, which is something customers love and even crave, "it is what sets you apart from your competition," he said.
"Your customer service can make or break your company's reputation", with this in mind, effective communication is equally important. Customers expect companies to use their preferred communication channels and have a consistent approach for managing and responding to customer requests.
A report published by Freshworks – Service Management Benchmark Report, which measured key performance indicators for the IT industry across 62 million tickets in 2021, said companies are taking notice and rapidly adopting more advanced technologies where nearly 25 per cent of integrations included bots and workflow applications — a 40 per cent increase compared to 2020.
The report analysed anonymous, aggregated data from 86 countries, more than 4,200 organisations, and over 62 million unique employee support tickets.
AUTOMATION FOR BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
As said earlier, effective communication is one of the most important factors in customer experience, so is being friendly.
"We don't have to be best friends with our customers, but we do have to create a friendly and inviting experience. A big word that comes to mind—especially as we navigate through the Covid-19 pandemic is empathy. That's a powerful part of a friendly experience," said Stephen.
Employees play a crucial role in making sure they feel valued, and customers want agents to know about the products and services the company offers, and they want answers to their questions along with a quick fix to any problems or issues they have and new tech features including AI-powered responses played a significant role in speeding up resolutions as bots deflected nearly 60 per cent of tickets.
The report also revealed that global IT teams adapted to remote work in 2021, resolving employee tickets 23 per cent faster than the year before as overall resolution time for IT tickets went down by seven hours, proving in a world where employees increasingly rely on technology to get their work done; automation, virtual agents, and chatbots helped companies delight employees in the remote and hybrid work era.
Companies with automations achieved resolution times 22 per cent faster than those who did not, and companies offering a catalogue of IT services through their ITSM software reduced resolution times 17 per cent compared to those who did not.
"Making sure IT works flawlessly is essential for modern businesses, we found that IT teams mastered the challenges of remote work last year in large part by employing powerful yet easy-to-use technologies that help them do more, faster. Importantly, these technologies are also engaging employees at work, which is critical to help companies retain talent and grow," said Stephen.
While less than one per cent of IT interactions were via chat, this channel provided significant benefits, employees who chatted with virtual agents saw customer satisfaction scores hit 100 per cent in some cases, while delivering 48 per cent faster responses (5.21 hours) and 62 per cent faster resolution times (8.74 hours) compared to those who don't use virtual agents.
"This is a year-long and lifetime focus. Without customers, we don't have a business. Without employees, we can't serve our customers. It is imperative that we create solutions that would benefit our customers that are simple yet effective," said Freshworks' director of Solutions Engineering (Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa) Preethi Bridgement.
FOR EVERYONE
In any automation or digital first effort, cost has been the deal breaker.
Stephen said, along with Freshworks aim to ensure amazing customer experience, Freshworks Sprout is available for small companies.
In the current landscape, having a consolidated platform to manage one's business would be ideal and Sprout offers Freshworks best system at no cost and seamless migration solutions too.
FOR DELIGHTFUL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES
One of the presenters at the Malaysian edition of Freshworks Global Jam is fashion house-turned-lifestyle retailer, Zalora.
The company uses Freshworks Omnichannel solutions to respond faster and exceed its customer expectations by increasing its agent response time and enhancing personalisation to its 50 million monthly online shoppers.
"Customers today are constantly online, on multiple devices. They expect instant gratification, which means our brand must be available 24/7 on all channels," said Zalora director of payments Kannan Rajaratnam, adding tha personalisation is key to great customer experiences too.
In fact, Accenture found that 48 per cent of customers who leave a brand do so because their experience was not tailored enough to their preferences.
According to Rajaratnam, the pandemic has resulted in a huge surge for online shoppers and the brand has increased its range of products from apparel only to work-from-home essentials, and electronics too, but needed a digital shopping and support experience to meet the demand.
With Freshdesk Omnichannel, Zalora was able to streamline customer support activity from instant messaging to social media into one platform.
"Before Freshworks, Zalora used multiple systems and applications which led to data silos and slowed down support agents. With a unified view of customer interaction and transaction history across digital channels, agents can engage in more personalised conversations and increase customer retention," he said.
"Using Freshdesk, we have seen a significant reduction in abandoned carts, and we find 75 per cent of our customers become repeat shoppers," said Rajaratnam, adding that prioritising chat support on instant messaging and social media has helped increase loyalty among the 'digital native' customers.
Sharing other instances, Rajaratnam said Freshdesk also greatly improved the company's ability to manage customer surges especially during promotion where instead of having to hire several hundred part-time agents for the event, each Zalora agent can now manage up to six customers simultaneously.
"And, thanks to a simple onboarding process as well as easy to navigate features, we don't need our agents to be working from one place, in fact our employees have been operating from their preferred locations – in the region – and still perform.
"Everyone is very happy with the arrangements and this too has contributed to the success of Zalora's customer experience, as a whole," shared Rajaratnam as he shares his experience on the Freshworks Global Jam stage adding that their customer satisfaction scores increased five per cent every quarter since they start using Freshdesk," he said.
The Zalora sales organisation also started using Freshdesk which helped the deals desk team improve agility with a unified ticketing system.
"Online commerce requires online support," said Freshworks chief customer officer Pradeep Rathinam.
"When it comes to delivering an exceptional customer experience, Zalora is doing it right. We're thrilled to see consumer retail companies like Zalora build lifelong customer relationships," he said.