Freshdesk Messaging Review

Product:
Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:

Freshdesk Messaging
Freshworks
2010
San Mateo, CA

Ownership:
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:

Private
50,000+
Cloud
Yes

Product Overview

Freshdesk Messaging (formerly Freshchat) enables Sales, Marketing and Customer Service teams to communicate with prospects and customers in real time through the web, mobile or social platforms. Users can deploy an AI-powered chatbot widget that detects the customer’s intent and then provide them with an answer or transfer them to an agent. The widget can also help Sales and Marketing teams by qualifying leads and booking meetings.

The software has numerous benefits, including:

• Improved customer service
• Automated repetitive processes
• Integration with chatbot builders, customer relationship management (CRM) software, eCommerce solutions, WhatsApp and other applications
• Multilanguage capability
• Scalable pricing plans

Features

Freshdesk Messaging has many features. We focus on its key ones.

Workflows – There are several features to help users automate their workflows. They can create rules that assign chats based on an agent’s availability or skills and set up business hours for individuals or teams. In addition, the co-browsing feature lets agents share their screens with customers (e.g., live demos). Additional workflow features are converting chats into tickets, sharing chat transcripts, resolving inactive chats automatically and sending email notifications of unread chats to customers.

Team Inbox – With the team inbox, agents can organize conversations, write private notes, store canned responses and reassign chats to another agent. The Inbox Views feature includes predefined views, so agents can stay on top of their chats, and Custom Views allow them to filter the chats based on their preference.

There’s a rich messaging feature that allows agents to use images, videos, gifs and emojis within a chat, and the Smart Plugs feature can pulls customer contextual data from an integrated third-party system. Additional features include bulk actions, a multilingual Team Inbox and live translation during a chat.

Messaging channels – Agents can chat with customers via the brand’s website or mobile app. In addition, they can chat with the customer in their preferred messaging application because Freshdesk integrates with WhatsApp for Business, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter and LINE.

Dashboard and reports – Managers can see a real-time overview of the team inbox, including incoming conversation and the speed of the chat responses. There’s an advanced feature that’s available on the Estate and Forest pricing plans that allows managers to see their team’s performance via the dashboard. Freshdesk Messenger includes built-in reports on metrics like Conversation Overview, Team Performance, Customer Satisfaction and Agent Availability.

Freddy AI – Freshdesk Messaging uses Freddy AI, which relies on machine learning technology to assist customers. Freddy AI engages with the customer in any channel and provides them with a relevant answer from the knowledge base. It also detects the customer’s intent and follows up with them with additional answers or routes them to an agent. Users can easily build conversational AI flows with the Custom Flows feature without coding knowledge. They can also integrate their own bots with Freshdesk Messaging via conversational APIs and webhooks.

Acquisitions & Engagement – This optional feature allows marketers to create chat and email campaigns. They can send triggered messages to website visitors based on their demographics and site interest (e.g., browsing, purchasing), and they can set up targeted messages (e.g., discounts, product announcements, onboarding) to specific customer segments. Freshdesk Messaging has the ability to add images, videos, GIFs or emojis into a message, and marketers can preview the message before sending. Finally, marketers can track their campaign with metrics like opens, clicks and reply rates.

Target Market

Freshdesk targets companies of all sizes in various industries, such as retail, education, hospitality, health care and manufacturing. We’ve listed 10 of its customers below.

Implementation/Integration

Companies that want to enroll in a paid plan can sign up for a 21-day free trial of the Pro plan. They can sign up online and begin using the software quickly. At the end of the trial, they can add their credit card information to their account and select a subscription plan.

Freshdesk Messaging is built inside the Freshdesk platform and integrates with other Freshworks products and third-party systems, such as chatbot builders, CRM software, telephony providers, project management solutions and eCommerce software.

Customer Service & Support

Freshdesk Messaging has a resource library that includes how-to guides, webinars, videos and whitepapers. The Freshworks Academy includes courses for users that want to learn how to use the software and gain better skills in customer service.

Email support is available for all plan users, and 24/5 phone support is included in all paid plans.

Pricing

Freshdesk Messaging has a free plan that accommodates up to 100 agents and up to 10,000 Monthly Unique Visitors (MUV) per account. It includes the Freddy AI chatbots, chatbots analytics, predefined inbox views, conversation labels, topics, groups, conversation labels, bulk actions, user properties, a mobile SDK, WordPress, Shopify and integration with Freshdesk.

There are three paid plans (billed annually), which are:

• Growth – The Growth plan costs $15 per agent, per month and includes all the features of the free plan, plus up to 100,000 MUVs per agent, up to 2,000 free bot sessions per month, assignment rules, priority inbox, canned responses, private notes, user events and timelines, user segmentation, the ability to define global business hours, offline messaging, a basic dashboard, FAQs, a Conversations Overview report, Facebook Messenger, the ability to send files and access to the Freshworks Marketplace app store.
• Pro – The Pro plan costs $39 per agent, per month and includes all the features of the Growth plan, plus up to 300,000 MUVs per agent, up to 3,000 free bot sessions per month, the IntelliAssign feature, the ability to set up business hours by groups, co-browsing, live translate, advanced dashboards, advanced automation, team performance report, the Agent Availability report, multilingual support, roles and permissions, customer satisfaction surveys and reports, conversation APIs and integration with Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Business.
• Enterprise – The Enterprise plan costs $69 per agent, per month and includes all the features of the Pro plan, plus up to 400,000 MUVs per agent, up to 5,000 bot sessions per month, allowed domains and IP addresses and user authentication.

In addition, Freshdesk Messaging offers omnichannel capabilities that combine the features of Messaging, Freshdesk Support Desk (a help desk software) and Contact Center (call center solution). The plans are (billed annually):

• Growth Omnichannel – The Growth Omnichannel plan costs $29 agent, per month and includes up to 2,000 free bot sessions per month, up to 2,000 incoming messages per month, email/social/messaging/telephony channels, a knowledge base, a chatbot builder, chatbot analytics, topics, contact management, custom inbox views, SLAs and business hours, access to the Freshworks Marketplace app store, automations, data center locations, ticket/conversation/call reports and a basic omnichannel dashboard.
• Pro Omnichannel – The Pro Omnichannel plan costs $59 per agent, per month and includes up to 3,000 free bot sessions, up to 3,000 incoming messages per month, custom SLA and business hours, custom roles and permissions, custom reporting and dashboards, WhatsApp Business, Apple Business Chat, team performance report, advanced automations, multilingual support, extendable API limits, up to 5,000 collaborators, knowledge base versioning, holiday routing, agent availability report, advanced call management, customer satisfaction surveys and reports and custom apps.
• Enterprise Omnichannel – The Enterprise Omnichannel plan costs $99 per agent, per month and includes up to 5,000 free bot sessions, up to 5,000 incoming messages per month, IP range restrictions, a sandbox, HIPAA and PCI compliance, a agent assist bot, an email bot, auto triage, a canned responses suggester, allowed IPs, an audit log, knowledge base approval workflows, up to 5,000 collaborators, agent shifts, a thank you detector, social signals, user authentication, RPA connectors, omnichannel routing, a voicebot, speech-enabled IVR, abandoned call metrics and service level monitoring.

Lastly, users can purchase up to 1,000 additional bot sessions at $75 per month.

Shortcomings

Some users have mentioned that the mobile app isn’t always user friendly (e.g., managing chats is time consuming) and that there are limited options in customizing reports.

Screenshots

About

Freshworks’ mission is to provide organizations with an easy-to-use customer engagement solution so that they can build better relationships with customers. It launched in 2011 as a customer service software and has grown its product portfolio since then with Freshworks CRM (2016), Freshworks 360 Multiproduct Suite (2018) and Freshsuccess (2020).

Freshworks has received many accolades, including recognition from Gartner (e.g., 2020 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center, 2019 Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation) and the Forbes‘ 2019 Cloud 100 List. It’s headquartered in San Mateo, CA, and has offices in India, Australia, Germany, France, Singapore, the Netherlands and the U.K.

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