for many, Facilitating a meeting or a workshop may seem like a dreadful task. Facilitating a remote workshop – even more so. There’s something inherently challenging about not being in the same room with your team. You can’t really revert to small talk when the atmosphere gets stiff. You can’t create a warm welcoming atmosphere to ease everyone into the exercises. And let’s face it, ice-breaking games over video conference can seem nothing short of awkward and cringy.

As Product people, we all know how important our product roadmap is. It allows us to connect product strategy to a timeline, outline what’s coming when and clarify why you are doing things. But we heard from many of our customers that they expect for more, so we’ve revamped the roadmap. Now, it doesn’t only tell everyone what you’re planning to do, it also keeps track of the actual progress of your development teams so everyone is informed on what actually happened.

The last thing customers want to do over the holidays is sit on hold or get shuffled between departments in search of answers to their questions. It’s enough to make even the most loyal customers say, “Bah humbug!” As the holidays rapidly approach, companies that want to avoid ending up on their customers’ naughty list are taking stock of their customer service and support departments in advance of the holiday rush.

U.S. companies lose more than $62 billion annually due to poor customer service. That’s why getting customer service right should be a priority for every business, regardless of size. And in order to provide this exceptional customer service, businesses need to be data-driven, and make use of data from a variety of different sources. Data isn’t as complicated as you might think. Most modern customer service systems provide the necessary support to build a data-driven customer service team.

It’s no longer surprising that consumers want to message businesses. Chat and messaging are already common features of many websites and apps, whether it’s for live support or peer-to-peer conversations. Simply put, the face of conversations is changing. Conversations are important—they’re the building blocks of relationships. Relationships with our families, friends, colleagues, even our mortal enemies are mediated through conversations—or a lack of them.

It’s official! We’re the fastest-growing ecosystem in the world. There are 885 apps listed on the Freshworks unified marketplace — with 575+ Freshdesk apps — compared with Zendesk’s 805 and it just took us just over three years to achieve this number compared with Zendesk’s seven. As we continue to race towards yet another milestone (of 1000 apps), here’s a quick look at some of our latest additions!

We’re putting a spotlight on our brand new cast of app integrations. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Ride-hailing business Bolt has a unique view of customer support: instead of focusing on delighting customers, its primary goal is to resolve issues at lightning speed. “We’re not in the business of delighting our customers when they reach out for support. We understand they want a solution and they want it yesterday,” said Toby Humphrey, product manager at Bolt.