Fri Oct 12

Freshworks Launches “Freddy”: an AI Engine

Written by Media Release

Freshworks Launches “Freddy”: an AI Engine to enrich customer experience at every touchpoint

Integration with Google AI technology brings conversational AI to the Freshworks customer engagement platform through voice interactions

SYDNEY, Australia. October 12, 2018 – Freshworks, a global leader in customer engagement software, today announced the launch of “Freddy”, an “Omnibot” AI engine that enhances the sales, support and marketing capabilities for businesses of all sizes. Announced at Refresh 18 – Freshworks’ inaugural customer conference – Freddy leverages Google AI technology Google Assistant to help businesses resolve customer issues more effectively and efficiently through a mix of human and machine-based voice interactions.

Branded with a canine look and feel, Freddy the Omnibot is trained to make the life of human agents and end-users much simpler. Freddy offers channel agnostic contextual self-service to customers. The Freddy AI engine also enables agent assist to help new agents onboard a team with relative ease by proactively and systematically troubleshooting customer queries. Sales executives using Freshworks’ CRM product powered by Freddy will be able to stay on top of their sales pipeline by auto calibrating the available leads. All this is made naturally available to users and admins across multiple communication channels through voice interactions.

Freddy automatically streamlines customer support

Available in all of Freshworks customer engagement products, Freddy learns from the Freshworks records of customer interactions across marketing, sales and support, and automatically replies to common queries in email, chat, voice-calls and even social media with the appropriate content from the customer’s knowledge base. This enables sales and support teams to focus on more complex, high-value inquiries.

For example, customers having an issue with a Freshworks client’s product can say “Hey Acme Support” into their Google-enabled assistant and ask for help. Freddy, the SaaS industry’s first ‘omnibot’ can help troubleshoot the issue via the customer’s choice of channel: voice, chat, email or text. If Freddy can’t resolve the issue, it is routed to a live agent along with the context of the conversation and all relevant customer information.

“Traditional enterprise AI platforms have been too intimidating and complex to understand and implement. They certainly haven’t been easy to use for customers or their representatives at the front lines of customer service, preventing businesses from achieving the full benefits of AI,” said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshworks. “Freddy removes that complexity and frustration by delivering timely customer information for representatives and instantly answering questions anytime or anywhere customers need support.”

Omnibots represent next-generation customer engagement

"We adopted Freshworks' Freddy Omnibot platform for a highly automated and personalized customer experience,” said Vishal Gupta, head of product at PhonePe, a Flipkart company and India’s largest UPI-based payment platform. For PhonePe, Freddy fetches context from the transactions made and offers contextual assistance for a personalized self-service experience from right within the app. “We have been using it for a year and can confidently say that we have accomplished most of what we had in mind."

Mathrubootham also noted that Freddy significantly expands the capabilities of the first iterations of chatbots. “Chat has been a powerful first vehicle for Natural Language Processing (NLP), but today is too limited for customer-engagement issues. Consumers demand better service in the communication channels they prefer, whether it’s modern messaging platforms, social media or even automated IoT applications. With Freddy the AI engine, possibilities become limitless and customer experience can be enriched at every touchpoint and across multiple channels.”

For more information on Freddy the Omnibot, please visit: https://www.freshworks.com/freddy-ai-engine

Fri Oct 12

21st Century Leadership Summit

Written by Tess Sanders Lazarus

Australia’s top leaders and CEOs converge on Sydney to share their insights and mentor future leaders

Some of the top CEOs and business leaders will converge on Sydney on 24 November to speak at the 21^st Century Leadership Summit which is being held at UNSW Sydney.

The Leadership Summit is an intensive one-day event and will feature high profile speakers including Danny Celoni, CEO, Pepsi Co, Australia and New Zealand, Vivek Gupta, Vice President and Managing Director, Procter & Gamble (P&G), Australia and New Zealand, Major General, Fergus McLachlan AO, Commander, Australian Army, and Professor Ian Jacobs, President and Vice Chancellor, UNSW Sydney, among many others.

The focus of the summit is leadership in the 21st century and the key themes will include leadership, digital disruption, diversity and inclusion. Apart from keynotes, three panel discussions will focus on these topics with relevant leaders, like Samantha Turner, Diversity and Inclusion Lead for the Westpac Group and Victoria Park, Diversity and inclusion Director at PwC. Tickets are currently on sale and up to one thousand people are expected to attend ranging across the business, education, government and community sectors.

Last year, proved to be a great opportunity to network among an audience made up of professionals from over 60 leading companies and students from 30 leading academic institutions.

“I am extremely proud to be delivering such a significant leadership development event for aspiring young leaders,” Shahid Majeed, founder and CEO of E-LEAD, said today.

“By bringing together some of the most successful CEOs and leaders to share their views and thoughts on leadership, summit attendees will gain rare insight into how successful leaders think and behave and what kinds of characteristics ‘leaders of tomorrow’ will need to have in order to navigate leadership in the future.

“Our leaders of tomorrow will need to fully understand how to embrace diversity and achieve inclusion. They will need to understand how innovation and digital disruption is going to affect our lives, our work places and our behaviours.

“These things are essential if our future leaders are going to lead our businesses, communities and economies in a truly meaningful, harmonious, respectful, and responsible way.

“Many of the speakers will provide valuable insight into leadership within their organisations. Vivek Gupta, will explain how P&G embraces diversity and inclusion to reflect the diverse needs of consumers and harness the unique skills and voices of all employees.”

As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer brands, Vivek Gupta’s insights into P&G are expected to be one of the highlights of the event.

The leadership summit is the brainchild of Shahid Majeed, founder and CEO of E-LEAD. E-LEAD is a global centre of excellence for leadership, engagement and development – providing a broad range of leadership programs for high school and university students as well as young professionals. It is an Australian organisation devoted to enhancing the capabilities, aspirations and impact of future and emerging leaders, with a strong emphasis on ensuring access among participants from disadvantaged and minority group communities.

Shahid Majeed is a globally renowned leadership professional. His resilience, resourcefulness and strong team have been paramount in the development and delivery of the summit. It is one of the first of its kind to attract such a high level of support from across the corporate sector.

Further information about the event can be found at:

http://www.e-lead.com.au/leadership-summit/