For every company – no matter how big or small – having a quality CRM is critical in supporting business efficiency and operational excellence. A CRM tool that works around the customer and integrates different tools and capabilities into one place is swiftly being recognized as the best step forward.
Startups, in particular, need to keep close attention to the benefits of customer management systems. As small dynamic teams, startups need to leverage every resource at their disposal and make optimal decisions that are highly customer-centric. We recently looked at the value of all-in-one CRM systems for startups with the help of Freshworks.
Freshsale Suite – the CRM created by Freshworks and specifically catering to the individual CRM needs of startups – has had a proven track record of helping companies across the globe boost their success and leverage new possibilities and opportunities. It’s a software tool that is able to nurture relationships, develop personalized experiences at scale, drive deals to close further and generate more opportunities for startups – the perfect blend for any startup in any vertical. It’s an all-in-one CRM that beautifully and succinctly connects sales and marketing teams and processes around the customer – all while reducing IT complexity and cost.
Freshsales Suite operates on its own as a valuable CRM tool, and is frequently clubbed with Freshdesk (Support desk) and Freshchat (messaging tool) products to enhance experiences and outcomes further. Sign up today and you can get up to $10,000 in credits!
Here, we look at how Freshsales Suite is helping some well-known brands manage the full breadth of their customer relationship strategy.
Find more opportunities
One of the core benefits of Freshsales Suite is its ability to help teams generate more leads – a reported 10x more. Companies can use the platform to attract visitors, convert them into leads, run campaigns, and turn websites into lead generation machines.
This was one feature that helps Instantprint – a UK-based startup that has been growing at a rate of 136% in the past 5 years. With Freshsales Suite, Instantprint created a 360 overview of each potential customer – regardless of which channel they had used to interact. It also meant that during the pandemic, the startup could identify new customers and pivot the focus of its lead generation to help with PPE supply issues.
Instantprint has grown at such a rapid pace, that it became a challenge to understand how to improve service levels and leverage new opportunities. Without an all-in-one system, the team struggled with a lack of visibility, an absence of tracking, and a lack of customer feedback.
Implementing Freshsales with Freshdesk Omnichannel meant they could bring all their communication channels into one platform at no cost to themselves.
“With Freshworks, we have been able to centralize omnichannel support onto a single platform. This has given us a 360-degree view of customers no matter what channel they decided to interact on, helping agents guide them to the best possible outcome with complete context.” Duncan Tyler, Customer Services Manager at Instantprint
During the pandemic, this became critical in finding new possibilities and keeping the customer to the fore. Pivoting warehouses to produce PPE, Instantprint turned to e-commerce sites like Amazon to sell directly to the end-users and Shopify to sell to businesses. With the help of integrations, they were able to set it up so that the orders were fed through from the websites to their customer service platform.
Deliver personalized experiences at scale
The customer should be at the center of everything you do. Catering to each customer, and potential customer, needs is critical for success. And even more so for startups that need to establish a brand identity and a reputation for customer excellence.
Therefore, a platform that enables personalized experiences is an indispensable asset for any sales and marketing team. With the Freshsales suite, users can build tailored campaigns and optimize them with real-time data for even better engagement.
It also leverages the power of AI through Freddy AI, which helps to identify the best leads at the right time – so no more unwanted reach outs – saving teams’ time and preventing sending out unwanted campaigns.
This has been particularly useful for Brewdog. In a community-owned brand, creating personalized customer journeys is fundamental to the brand’s longevity. With Freshsales Suite, the company has been able to keep a close eye on customers, enhance transparency, and identify ways to keep meaningful connections with clients.
A key part of this has been the integration capabilities of Freshdesk and Freshchat which enables improved communications with clients and helps to nurture relationships.
“Our equity punks are our biggest brand ambassadors, but also our biggest critics, which we absolutely love. Any feedback they provide us with is really valuable, thanks to their knowledge of our history, our brand, and our projects. My team is focused on providing world-class personalized service through every interaction.” Emma DeSena, Customer Services Manager at BrewDog.
For the Brewdog team, and indeed most startups, there has been a notable increase in expectations with regard to customer contact. And Freshales is enabling this to happen – with powerful integration and analytics.
“Being able to identify trends in real-time with Freshdesk Analytics has provided us with greater feedback on what our customers are missing the most when something is out of stock. We’re able to use Freshdesk to pass on that feedback to the e-commerce team to ensure we serve customers better.” Emma DeSena, Customer Services Manager at BrewDog.
For Instantprint, Freshsales has helped to reinvent customer engagement and fuel an even more personalized and empathetic service. Instantprint introduced a brand new service for video consultations to help concerned customers have a one-on-one, live agent interaction. The team integrated the meeting scheduling app Arrange with Freshchat to allow customers to schedule a video consultation at a convenient time and interact with agents over Zoom.
Introducing chat as a channel has helped Instantprint stay on top of rising contact volumes and deliver speedy and efficient customer service. Integrating Freshchat with messaging applications like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp also helped the support team become more accessible to their customers
Delivery Hero has also used Freshchat to enhance internal communications – improving messaging between delivery riders and their support agents, thus improving customer service.
The riders receive and work on delivering orders from Delivery Hero’s in-house app, and they, in turn, reach out to the support team from the messaging option within the same app experience on issues like ‘missing items, unreachable customers, traffic delays, or even a flat tire during the delivery.
“Freshchat allowed us to automate message assignment and enabled our tech team to integrate the chat messenger inside the same app where the riders manage orders. And at that time, it was really a game-changer for us!” Philip Upton, Operations Specialist for Delivery Hero’s Global Contact Center
Delivery Hero covers rider messaging communication in around 50 countries with Freshchat. One of the best bits for the team? The ability to scale across markets – allowing for assignment rules based on each country, language and contract type, targeted messages and further app, and API automation. It now means that Delivery Hero can handle more than 7 million m monthly messages between agents and riders in one place.
All Freshchat instances are connected with a central Freshdesk account, which enables more granular data to be captured, giving valuable and actionable insights.
Drive deals to closure faster
Startup teams are often strapped with resources. Getting deals closed, at pace and with excellence is a process that requires some mastery. Freshsales can help make it all a little smoother and simpler. It’s reported that the software can improve sales conversions by 50% – facilitated by automation and integrations that enhance team collaboration and customer-company communications.
With Freddy AI, teams can better prioritize deals, and best identify when to focus on which deals to drive the most revenue. The 360 platform gives complete oversight across the sales funnel from lead to revenue with multi-touch attribution. It also allows for dynamic forecasting, helping map out strategies, and full-team collaboration.
For the Brewdog team, the omnichannel capabilities of Freshsales have helped ensure that customers and prospective customers are targeted efficiently during the sales funnel.
“Besides email, we now serve customers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter through Freshdesk. We’ve seen a visible shift in volume from email to social media after the integration.” Emma DeSena, Customer Services Manager, BrewDog
It’s also helping identify new trends – giving the team the tools and insights they need to leverage every possible resource to close those all-important deals at the right time.
“The social media integrations allowed us to truly listen to what customers were saying and understand what was driving the negative sentiment towards our brand. We wanted to identify those trends as quickly as possible and address them,” Emma says.
It’s a common thread – for Instantprint, Freshsales Suite was able to give them the ability to understand their customers better to see how they could delight them even more.
“I absolutely love the Freshworks approach where they see their clients as friends. We have a real, authentic relationship with the Freshworks staff we deal with, and I’ve never doubted that Freshworks genuinely wants the best for our business. It’s refreshing and much appreciated.” Emma DeSena, Customer Services Manager, BrewDog
Freshsales Suite: Scalable Solution
Thanks to its innovative and user-centric design Freshsales Suite can support the smooth running of sales and marketing teams across the spectrum. One company that has enjoyed exponential benefits has been TKF Telecom France. A company that sells to large enterprises usually involves a multi-threaded buying process across key decision-makers. Having an all-in-one platform has been a game changer.
Dealing with various – and pretty relatable challenges – including handling complex accounts, a lack of partner collaboration and low team engagement and productivity, the firm concluded that an all-in-one platform was needed. Enter Freshsales.
“As soon as we were given a demo of Freshsales, we knew it would resolve some of our most pressing sales challenges, to begin with. In fact, after a short set-up period and minimal training, we were able to hit the ground running from Day 1. And it hasn’t disappointed till today.” Jean-Philippe Thiery, Managing Director, TKF Telecom France
Freshsales helps TKF make larger deals with unified customer views, improving channel collaboration and optimizing selling and sales forecasting. With it, multi-source data is unified into one place, giving teams a comprehensive and unified view of each buyer and point of contact during the entire sales funnel – from SDR to account executive. Parent and child mapping capabilities and oversight tools have proven indispensable in this.
Teams are also working with more synergy as the platform cleverly balances transparency with privacy by giving partners a level of access to the solution. The partners’ user roles are defined in a way that they benefit from organization-level analytics and insights that would not otherwise be accessible to them but are otherwise restricted to information proprietary to TKF Telecom France.
It means that the company has optimized sales and enhanced abilities to forecast sales accurately. Freshsales has become TKF Telecom France’s primary sales system, there has been a nautical productivity improvement across teams. This is partly due to minimal app switching and data residing in one system. Additionally, Freddy, Freshsales’ AI engine offers sales leaders the ability to surface granular-level insights into various reports – from pipeline to productivity.
Freshworks for Startups
Startups can power their processors with the help of Freshworks’ dedicated startup offering Freshworks for Startups. It gives startups everything they need to enhance connections with customers, and reach business aspirations.
With a global community of over 400 VCs, accelerators, incubators, and startup communities from 87 countries, it’s a no-brainer for any startup wanting to scale. The software itself is easy to use and provides teams with the ability to engage leads and nurture relationships all on one single unified view, thanks to Freshsales Suite. Startups that are already using the software, such as Brewdog and Delivery Hero, are expanding fast, and are a great reflection of the value that Freshworks can offer.
Get in touch and sign up today – you get up to $10,000 in credits!
