New Delhi, Feb 6,2023: Chennai-born global software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks on Monday announced a partnership with Meta (formely Facebook) where companies have increased customer retention by using Freshworks’ conversational AI bots to automate communication with buyers through WhatsApp, Instagram Messaging, and Facebook Messenger.

The Meta Business Messaging integrations with Freshworks’ CX and CRM products make customer and prospect engagement easy for support, sales and marketing teams.

With Freshworks AI-powered bots, businesses can tailor and automate messaging journeys for each channel, configure workflows across multiple channels or languages, and efficiently train bots with NLP learning capabilities, the company said in a statement.

“Messaging is how people and businesses want to communicate and get business done. Businesses of all sizes are embracing this shift and finding new opportunities to better engage with customers, offer support, and drive sales,” said Kyle Jenke, Business Messaging, Director of Partnerships at Meta.

“We’re excited to work with Freshworks to make WhatsApp available for more businesses to better manage the end-to-end customer journey on our messaging platform,” Jenke added.

According to Forrester, 68 per cent of consumers say that if they can choose where to make a purchase, they are more likely to go with a business that offers convenient communication.

“Freshchat and Freshmarketer seamlessly integrate with Meta’s main messaging platforms — WhatsApp, Instagram Messaging and Facebook Messenger — enabling businesses to communicate with their customers quickly and easily, resulting in a better customer experience,” said Prakash Ramamurthy, Chief Product Officer at Freshworks.

Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks operates around the world to serve more than 60,000 customers including Allbirds, Blue Nile, Bridgestone, Databricks, Klarna, NHS, OfficeMax, and PhonePe.

The Nasdaq-listed firm was valued at $12.2 billion after it opened 21 per cent above the initial offering price of $36 apiece in September in 2021.

The company’s Founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham had highlighted that the IPO created a lot of wealth for its employees as more than 500 of its employees turned crorepatis (millionaires).

Founded by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy as Freshdesk in Chennai in 2010, the company started its journey as a helpdesk software for customer support. It decided to rebrand itself to Freshworks in June 2017 to incorporate the company’s growing software suite.