Freshworks expects to expand more

There's lots of room to grow in the space where Freshworks plays, said Johny Stephen, Head of Sales - ASEAN, Freshworks. Stephen was in Singapore for the Freshworks Jam series of events, which introduces Freshworks to new customers while celebrating existing customers around the world.

The company's sweet spot is helping enterprises which are struggling to manage many different point solutions. Freshworks provides AI-driven solutions on a single platform, and has made them "easy on the eye and easy to use". The company offers solutions for customer relationship management, customer experience and employee experience.

"Each of our products is backward-engineered from the point of view of the user of the product, not of the customer," Stephen said. 

He explained that the Freshworks design philosophy targets Millennials, the largest segment of the working population. As a cohort, Millennials expect the Facebook or Instagram-style experience with business tools - it has to be easy to deal with. 

"From a user interface and user experience (UI and UX) perspective, we've designed (our portfolio) for the Millennials," he said.

Freshworks also prides itself on responsiveness. The company is ready to go to a customer and solve problems immediately, Stephen said. He recounted that when a customer pinged an Freshworks account manager at 4am, he received a response in 2 minutes, and had his issue resolved in 2 hours. In another incident, the CEO of Freshworks Girish Mathrubootham agreed to meet a customer alone at short notice because the customer did not want any blame attached to the Freshworks account team, and personally guaranteed to address the customer's challenges.

"We are a people-driven organisation, and each one of us takes our roles very seriously and respectfully," Stephen said. He also shared that "where rubber meets the road", "where we meet customers, we are empowered. We are given the autonomy to make some choices on the move which helps to make it easy to deal with customers in real time."

The company initially attracted small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), many of which have grown with Freshworks over the years. "What we learn from the big boys, we're using as knowledge to further help and consult the smaller companies that are coming and signing up with us," Stephen said.

"The SMB customers who have become midmarket and midmarket customers who have become enterprises are still with us."

Stephen also shared that some enterprises migrate from other brands to Freshworks as they are large, but not large enough to be given special treatment by their previous vendor. 

The Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa (APMEA) region is Freshworks' third-largest geography.