The Record - Issue 18: Autumn 2020

82 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om I NT E R V I EW Collaboration for customer satisfaction Bobby Jaffari shares how Freshworks’ partner network is helping clients improve existing solutions and reach new markets BY E L LY YAT E S - ROB E R T S S oftware development is everything at Freshworks. Not only is it the backbone of the company’s revenue stream, but it is also what sets it apart from its competitors. Its frequent release schedule enables it to quickly take feedback from customers and partners and make those suggestions live within the product. “A lot of companies in the software space are typically doing three to four software releases per year,” says Bobby Jaffari, North America president at Freshworks. “But we are generally making new releases on a weekly basis.” The business software provider recently launched its Freshdesk integration with Microsoft Teams and quickly added over 400 customers who are already reaping benefits from the joint solution. “Now that we have launched it, we are contin- ually talking to customers and prospects about how we can improve it for future releases,” explains Jaffari. “A lot of our customers have been asking how they can take information from their Teams conversations with clients and include that within their business work- flows for case management processes. “To respond to this, we are looking at lever- aging bots and artificial intelligence in the inte- gration. Using these kinds of technologies, our customers can analyse the conversation between two individuals and decide which parts of that conversation should be pulled into a customer support workflow. We are very excited to see how this could help our customers.” Collaboration is an integral part of Freshworks’ ethos and its understanding of the value of a partner community – like Microsoft’s – is helping it to accelerate its growth for the future. For example, it has been working with software distributor SHI to bring its solutions to the market. “Traditionally as a business we have focused on a more direct model and it has helped us get to a scale where we are today,” says Jaffari. “However, we are starting to shift our focus to partner communities because they enable us to extend our reach and identify the partners that can truly help us to help the end customer.” “Partner communities enable us to extend our reach and identify the partners that can truly help us to help the end customer” BOB BY J A F FAR I , F R E SHWOR K S