Item: Freshchat
Rating: 8
Author: Luke Kadillak

Overall Satisfaction with Freshchat

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

CAKE is a SAAS platform for companies who want to run a performance based marketing program/affiliate program. We have hundreds of clients who rely on us for technical support and setup consultation specifically when it comes to configuring postback integrations, onboarding their partners, and launching new campaigns. Freshchat has been directly integrated in our UI to streamline communication with our clients and allow them to get quick responses from our team.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Integrate directly within our UI
Provides a helpful AI chat bot
Converts chats into support tickets for escalation purposes

Cons

AI Chat Bot is still learning our business and tends to be bypassed quickly so user can speak directly with an agent
The chat icon is locked to 1 area of our UI vs being able to launch from multiple areas with context of where it was launched from

Return on Investment

Our NPS scores for responsiveness have gone up
Our metrics for response time to resolution has gone up
Overall client sentiment is happy with the feature

Usability

Freshchat was easy to integrate directly into our platform and already pairs well with our Freshdesk ticketing system. Its easy for our team to manage inbound chats and also easy for them to convert conversations into tickets and escalate up the chain when needed. Freshchat makes it easy for our customers to get answers quickly and all while they are working directly out of our system.

Alternatives Considered

Slack

Most of our customers prefer to use the Slack app. They also prefer to use it to communicate directly with our Client Success Team for strategic questions/consulting rather than using it to escalate support related issues. Freshchat is great because having it directly in the UI means customers can quickly report UI related bugs or issues to our support team.

Key Insights

Do you think Freshchat delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Freshchat's feature set?

Yes

Did Freshchat live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Freshchat go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Freshchat again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Slack, Freshdesk, Atlassian Confluence

Likelihood to Recommend

Freshchat is ideal for customers who need a quick question answered on the fly. Since we have a global support team, we generally have a live agent on the other side of the chat able to help at a moments notice. I feel that Freshchat has room for improvement with its AI chat bot. I wish the bot was able to push customers for additional information/clarification before just looping in our support rep.

Freshchat Feature Ratings

Using Freshchat

Users and Roles

10 - Our technical support team is the only team that uses freshchat to communicate with our customers. This team is the first line of defense to answer simple questions or escalate issues that effect our software. This team is required to act quickly and efficiently to ensure rapid response times and quick resolutions with our client base.

Support Headcount Required

2 - Our Head of Support is the one who manages our Freshchat and Freshdesk software.

Business Processes Supported

Quick product answers
Rapid Issue Escalation
Compliance logging of chat history

Innovative Uses

converting the chats into tickets within freshdesk was extremely helpful

Future Planned Uses

I hope that the AI becomes better to the point where all communication and escalations can be handled by the chat bot

Likelihood to Renew

Freshchat has met all our expectations and more. It has allowed our team to be more efficient with their time, field questions quickly, and escalate issues up the chain. We highly recommend freshchat as the perfect addition to anyone already using freshdesk or simply looking for a good solution for in app messaging.

Evaluating Freshchat and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Integration with Other Systems

Freshchat's ability to seamlessly integrate with FreshDesk's ticketing solution was one of the major reasons we purchased this product.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I think we would have looked more closely at the AI / Chat bot capabilities and ran some test data through it to see how well it could learn our business. Today its pretty sub-par and tends to get transferred to a live agent quickly. But, we also know we haven't fed it enough data yet to make it smarter.