Freshworks was founded in 2010, headquartered in California with offices across India, Germany, Australia, and the UK. Since then it has steadily expanded its solutions portfolio powered by a steady stream of funding – as recently as July of last year, the company picked up USD 100 million in a Series G funding.
Freshworks offers an end-to-end suite of business-focused software solutions, initially starting with customer experience software and then branching into new areas. In 2017, the company launched a cloud-based contact centre solution called Freshcaller, which we are going to review today.
Inside Freshcaller
Freshcaller is a zero hardware, web-based business telephony system that’s built on cloud technology. Its main USP is that it offers users/contact centre agents contextual data on every call. Freshcaller uses AI to intelligently route calls and introduces a clean design aesthetic.
Freshworks claims that the solution is relevant across a variety of use cases, from inbound sales to customer support. Let’s review its features in greater detail:
- Local and international calling – Freshcaller has a clear global focus with compatibility for 50+ countries. You can buy local numbers in every region, and even create vanity numbers to reinforce your brand. Freshcaller supports toll-free calling and portability to existing numbers as well
- Call handling capabilities – There are several features to simplify how you manage day-to-day calls, including multi-level IVR, shared lines, custom greeting, business hours, and call blocking. We were particularly impressed by Freshcaller’s holiday feature that lets you specify a unique holiday calendar and route calls accordingly. We feel that this would be incredibly useful for holiday-specific advertisements and multi-site contact centre workforce management
- Experience and communication monitoring – Like most next-gen contact centre platforms, Freshcaller offers real-time monitoring and reporting. Calls are automatically recorded and stored so that you can later use this data to train agents. There’s a real-time dashboard available to keep an eye on ongoing activity and barge in when necessary. Freshcaller includes dedicated abandoned call metrics to perform root cause analysis and improvement initiatives
- Performance augmentation – Apart from all the features reviewed above, Freshcaller supports several important capabilities to boost contact centre performance. There’s support for call conferencing and warm transfers to help multiple agents collaborate on addressing a single customer. Freshcaller provides a space to take in-call notes that are later embedded in the call history. After every call, agents must complete an “After Call Work” checklist, when they can follow up on requests, share feedback, and even take a break to optimise overall productivity
Why Freshcaller Makes a Difference
Unsurprisingly, Freshcaller is used by over 5,000 businesses across the globe. Not only does it cover every feature you could expect from a business telephony system, but there’s also a few nifty add-ons thrown in. For example, you can use the virtual hold capability to let your customers hang up and request a call-back. The elimination of long wait times can significantly improve customer experience and encourage engagement with your contact centre.
And Freshworks is focused on innovation, continually updating its cloud-based calling tool. There’s a Smart Answer Bot that’s currently in the works, where an automated assistant will be able to solve common issues like password resets and account activation.
It’s details like this that make all the difference between a bog-standard call centre tool and a platform that’s equipped to keep up with your growth curve, helping you at every step of the way.
What We Think
Freshworks is a one-stop-shop for your contact centre needs, covering everything from project management, website management, recruitment, sales, customer support, IT service, marketing, and of course, business telephony. If you’re looking to rapidly digitise your entire contact centre, exploring Freshworks 360 (which includes all of these capabilities) could be a good idea. Organisations like DHL, UNICEF, and GoodReads are already part of the Freshworks customer family.
For those who require a standalone telephony system, Freshcaller is an equally good bet. Pricing starts at a competitive USD 0 per minute per month with only per minute costing. And, Freshworks is careful to tailor pricing by geography – depending on where you’re located, you’ll receive an attractive package in your currency, with the possibility of scaling across the Freshworks product line-up.
