At the end of every year, managers and executives alike need to look into the future to plan their next steps. What new technology do you need to budget for? What are customers asking for now? What new skills do your agents need to develop – or do you need to hire for? The top trends in customer support can help illuminate a path forward.

We have found time to squeeze in yet another feature release before the end of a very successful year. Read receipts are now available on all platforms and devices!

When it comes down to it, each employee at your company is working towards the same overarching goal: to serve your customers. However, because the roles they play in reaching that goal are extremely different, it’s easy for individual teams to feel disconnected from one another. This isn’t ideal.

Freshworks had a rocking year in 2018, and we are taking a moment to look back at what happened in a year that was filled with so much activity. There were product launches: Freshconnect and Freshping came alive this year, to much fanfare and excitement. Freshconnect is going to play a crucial role in our Freshworks 360 platform, and Freshping will help organisations prove their credibility to their customers free of cost.

A community forum is one part of a self-service portal where customers can interact with each other, as well as your team, and it’s the perfect place to allow your user community to take shape. Customers can ask questions and get answers quickly from other community members, or search for older posts to find previous answers or workarounds to their current question.

We’re welcoming the new year with some great new apps to help you make the most of Zendesk!

It’s been said that your name is your favorite word. Likewise, a brand’s name is its favorite word. Pair their name with their logo, and it’s a self-love fest. You can see this play out when you order a physical product from an online store. The shipping box is often branded. Sometimes the tape is even branded. Then once you tear into it, the internal packaging is branded. Then the item, too — often in multiple places. Name, logo, name, logo, name, logo.

Time for our last round-up of the year! It’s been a landmark year for the Freshworks Marketplace, we’ve seen a huge influx of apps into the Marketplace. We’ve grown from 250 apps last December to 560 in early December 2018. There have been apps in huge demand like Trello and Atlassian Jira Plus as well as some innovative apps like BrightReps and Hugo which have integrated with Freshdesk to improve agent productivity as well as improve the quality of support.