Freshworks Refresh 2025 | Mika Yamamoto, Freshworks

Clips
More from Freshworks Refresh 2025

Mika Yamamoto

CCMO

Freshworks

play_circle_outline Freshworks emphasizes simplifying processes for better customer and employee experiences.

play_circle_outline 20% of software spend wasted due to unnecessary complexity within organizations.

play_circle_outline Overcoming Self-Inflicted Complexity: Enhancing Efficiency and ROI in Technology Investments for Organizational Growth

play_circle_outline Freshworks: Driving Innovation and Partnerships to Enhance Customer Experience and Operational Efficiency

Info
Transcript

Mika Yamamoto, Freshworks

Mika Yamamoto

CCMO Freshworks

In this interview from Refresh North America 2025, Freshworks chief customer and marketing officer Mika Yamamoto joins theCUBE’s Bob Laliberte at Oracle Park to unpack the real cost of complexity in service and IT environments. She shares findings from Freshworks’ global “cost of complexity” study of 700 organizations, revealing wasted software spend, unrealized ROI, stalled growth and nearly seven hours a week lost per employee to fragmented tools and processes. Yamamoto explains why much of this complexity is self-inflicted, how it fuels employee frustratio... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What are the hoped-for takeaways for customers and partners from this event? add

What is the primary reason organizations choose Freshworks, and what did the study reveal about the costs of complexity in software spending? add

What percentage of software spending is wasted by organizations due to complexity, and what do CEOs believe is causing delays and lack of growth? add

What initiatives are being taken to simplify customer experiences and enhance value through partnerships? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Mika Yamamoto, Freshworks

search

Bob Laliberte

>> Hello and welcome back to the Cubes coverage of Freshworks Refresh. We're here at Oracle Park in San Francisco. I'm Bob Laliberte, and I am joined by Mika Yamamoto, the chief customer and marketing officer. Welcome, Mika.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Thank you. It's so great to be here.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, it's been a great day. I've been here since the beginning, the keynote and so forth. Just real quick question for you. You've put this event on, what are you hoping customers and partners will take away from the event today?

Mika Yamamoto

>> One of the big takeaways that I'd love for people to think about is that we've accepted the fact that we have these complex environments and technology should be complex, and it should be weighty, should take consulting. It should take a lot of resources on the back end. And I think that what we want people to take away, including our partners, is that that doesn't need to be the case. That uncomplicating is possible and that there's simplicity and there's joy in simplicity, but there's also real results in simplicity.

Bob Laliberte

>> I think that's great. I mean, especially in modern environments where you've got all these microservices that are spinning up and down in seconds, you've got far more distributed environments. And not to mention all the AI technology that's being brought into it, right? It's hard not to be complicated. So any way organizations can simplify their environments, it seems like they would really want to be able to do that.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah. Now, along those lines of complexity, you actually went through the trouble of going out and doing some research on this to find out really what the impact was of complexity for organizations. I'm wondering if you can walk us through some of the top-level findings and maybe what some of the critical takeaways are for business leaders.

Mika Yamamoto

>> We engaged in this study because thematically, regardless of country, regardless of size, regardless of industry, the number one reason we are hearing customers frankly become customers of Freshworks or we said, "What's your number one challenge?" They would say, "Things are far too complicated and we're coming to you, Freshworks, because things are far too complicated." We thought, "What is the tax and what's the cost of complexity?" So we went out and interviewed 700 organizations just to find out. And so, what we found out was not surprising, but somewhat sad, that this is the state of the world right now, but we found out that 20% of all software spend is wasted by organizations just because of complexity. We found out that 53% of organizations are not realizing the ROI of their investments, hence the waste. And when we then dove deeper into that stat, 85% of CEOs said that it's actually not market dynamics that are causing these delays and lack of growth. It's actually a complexity that's driving lack of growth, which is the flip side and the lemonade to that, or the glass half full story to that is that most of this complexity is self-inflicted. And so, there's something we can do about it. And then the fact that we've got 60% of employees that we interviewed said that they're likely to, thinking about quitting their job in the next year is challenging. And it's sad as leaders to think that possibly 60% of our employees are thinking about this. And so, the message to take away is, again, we just don't have to accept that this is the world we have to be in. It doesn't have to be this complicated. There are solutions out there that can mitigate some of this complexity and there's different processes and ways of thinking about things, especially now with AI.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think the hard part is for the organizations being able to identify where that complexity exists, what are the processes that are really holding them back and then trying to figure out a solution to all of that, right? That's really what's going to drive them. I know from your keynote this morning you had talked about that employees are losing nearly seven hours a week due to complexity. Did your research dive into what specifically they're doing during those seven hours? Is it just watching the spinning clock? Is it waiting for something to come up on their machine or is it frustration, like you said that's driving them to leave? So many of them just want, they're thinking about their next job. What did you find in the report?

Mika Yamamoto

>> Well, they're frustrated for sure, and so that's causing them to want to leave. What they're doing is that they're having to use and go through way too many steps to get things done. So they find that they have to use this many disparate systems. They've got to go into one system to find out what a customer has said in email, and then a different system to go in to see if it's a customer service rep, for example, and what they may have said in chat. And then they've got to take and cut and paste sometimes all of that information to figure out the whole picture of the customer, to be able to really address the customer's need. And meanwhile, the customer's like, "Hello, I'm sitting here with the issue. You're one company. Can you not have one picture of what my challenge is, so you can help solve this?" Customers expectations are high. And so, it's going into multiple systems. It's figuring out who does what. It's being frustrated with the fact that there's accountability that seems to be spread throughout their organization. And so, it's frustration with taking too long to get things done that should be a lot more simple.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And that data fragmentation, what you were describing, being able to, having to go to multiple different tools to try and piece something together, do the manual correlation. I mean, it not only impacts the customer and user experience and user experience, I'm guessing that it's also going to be have a drain on, like you said, the employees themselves, having to live through that process.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely. And it's a drain on the leaders. So if I think of the admins that run our support organization, the fact that we've now got something that's ChatGPT-like that helps. You can now enter saying, "Who are our most productive or responsive agents?" For me to be able to do that previously actually required me to pull data from a few systems to be able to cobble that data together. It would probably take several hours, if not a day for me to find that information versus pull that information immediately. And now admins, anybody can then go in and ask a conversational query and get a good answer immediately, which is really nice to see.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, it certainly is. And that same data fragmentation is also going to impact their AI initiatives, not being able to get the right data at the right time to be able to do things. They're having to query all these different solutions.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> So organizations have this issue, they've got this complexity. What steps should they be taking to overcome it, to simplify their environment to uncomplicate, as you would say?

Mika Yamamoto

>> I think as with any problem, I think part of it is just recognizing there is a problem. I think some of us have grown. I mean inertia is a massive force and acceptance is a massive force. I think a lot of us have accepted the fact, a lot of us in industry have accepted the fact and think, "Well, this is just normal that we should have to operate this way." And so, first is recognizing that you don't, right? Recognize that there is a problem and there is actually a way out. It's hard. I think a lot of customers even or companies that realize that they have a problem then realize, "Well, if I have a problem, it's actually really challenging to get out of this situation." I think a lot of it has to do with it takes a lot of cross-company collaboration to get out of the situation. Because for me, as a part of my job is just to lead support. If I want to do something, I have to get the collaboration of our IT department to actually make a system change. And if you don't have a collaborative IT department or a collaborative product department that needs to do something, then you're kind of less holding the bag with the complexity. And so, I think it takes a lot of collaboration and joining blocking arms to get things done. And that's sometimes challenging too. So I think it's recognizing there's a problem, realizing and finding the solution and finding, because I mean often when you're facing a problem, it's hard to figure out, "Well, what do I do about it?" And then it's the collaborative piece in terms of how do you work across silos and across your organization to get things done.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, I mean a lot of times that technology debt that creates these issues, people just learn to live with it. They don't recognize or take action. Well, this is the way it's always been, so this is how we do things here.

Mika Yamamoto

>> So I take five steps to get something done, because that's how I've always done it, where you could actually not have any steps or just have one step. And so, I think realizing that there's something else out there and that something better is possible, is part of it.

Bob Laliberte

>> When you share the results of the survey, when you go out and talk to customers, does the light bulb go off? Do they get it? Do they start with, "That's not me," and then start thinking about it and go, "Oh yeah, that is me. That is our organization and we need to do something about?"

Mika Yamamoto

>> When we started talking about eliminating complexity in organizations before we did this survey, people felt seen. They felt, "Oh my gosh, you get me. You understand what I'm facing." Now that we've been talking about the cost of complexity, they think about it and they're taking a step back and we've talked to dozens of customers today alone, and they've said, "I not only feel like you understand where I am, I realize that I'm not alone, that I'm not the only one, and I actually realize how much of a toll it must be taking on my organization. And again, glass half full is I realize that upside to doing something." So a lot of people who are in customer support roles or in IT roles, that's considered to a lot of companies as back office functions. And I think what they're realizing is that they can actually deliver value. So a back office function that does things more effectively, whether it's an IT department or a customer support environment can not just drive efficiencies and take costs down. Improved customer service or employee satisfaction actually drives growth. And I think it was liberating for them to see that if they fix their own environments, again, it won't take their costs out of the system, they can actually turn into a growth engine for the company. And I think that they thought that that was pretty great to be able to have those stats to come back to their CFOs and COOs and their CEOs to be able to say, "Hey, this investment doesn't just make my world better. It makes your world better too."

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, that's huge. Going from a cost center to a growth center for any organization and doing it by simplifying as well is certainly more interesting. Clearly, I've talked to a lot of your customers today. I talked to partners today and they were all able to talk about the advantage they have with having a more simple, and when I say simple, I don't mean we were talking about this, when you've got these complex challenges, you need a sophisticated solution to accomplish that, but that in order to make it easy to use, you need to have that sophisticated solution, right?

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> To make it easy to use. So they've all talked about how they've leveraged it, how their end users, either the customers themselves or the partners have talked about how much better it is. So I'm just wondering if you've seen it, you know that simplicity is a real competitive advantage. Why aren't more companies talking about this? Why aren't more companies doing the surveys like you did, illustrating how you can transition from a cost center to a growth center by simplifying the environment?

Mika Yamamoto

>> Well, I think that you nailed it in terms of saying that we want to be simple. We don't want to be simplistic, we want to be simple and there's a massive difference between that. There's elegance and there's work that goes into creating something that is simple, that's enterprise grade, but doesn't just require that much weight on an organization, whether weight is time or whether weight is the number of resources someone needs to actually leverage or use. I think that the reason we're not seeing more language around that, frankly from vendors is it perpetuates their business. There's a lot of companies out there that make their money out of being complex, because it drives more license costs, it drives systems integration revenue. So there's a lot of businesses that are built on complexity that are maintained on complexity. And so, I think that's part of it. And frankly, in some environments for really large companies that need to bespoke systems, that complexity is necessary to run their businesses. But frankly, the majority of companies out there and organizations out there don't need that type of complexity. And so, I think the other end of the coin, as we talked about before, is that I think we've just learned to accept this complexity and I think that we have to realize that there is a different way.

Bob Laliberte

>> No, I think that's great. So seeing as how this is a customer event, I'm really curious to find out what your favorite customer outcome story is.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Yeah. Well, I get to talk to customers all the time, and I have lots of favorite customer stories. The thing that is great about talking to our customers is that we are also a customer of our own products. So we are customer, we call a customer zero. And so, because I'm responsible for, among other things, support in the organization, I drink my own champagne and I use Fresh Desk and I use Freddie AI Copilot, I use Freddie AI agents. And so, we've been able to realize 45% deflection of our L-one tickets using Freddie AI agents within our products, which is extraordinary, because what helps me do is I don't have to grow my support, employee support costs, and that doesn't straight line with our growth. So it doesn't grow at the same pace. I can actually not spend as much OPEX, but still I can take some of the savings I get from AI and still invest it in upscaling our employees, so I can put some bottom line benefit, but still put more money into upscaling our employees. We've reduced the ramp time for our agents by 50%. So it used to take six months to get someone fully productive. It now takes three, which is absolutely extraordinary for us and our customers. And so, it's really great to again, drink our own champagne and see the benefits. It adds legitimacy to our customer conversations that I have, is that, hey, I do it too, and I've faced the same challenges, but here's the benefits that I've had. And it's not just efficiency, because we've seen improvements in customer satisfaction and I've been able to reinvest in our people, and reinvest in our company, because of the savings that I get. So it's a great story to get to tell, because I face the same challenges as our customers face.

Bob Laliberte

>> No, I think that's fantastic that your customers zero. You're able to do that, and I think one of the biggest areas where that's going to be able to help with all the AI initiatives as well, right?

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> So many organizations are trying to figure out how they're going to leverage AI, how they're going to be able to get that return on their investment, what value it's going to bring. So you're being able to say, "I'm in the same boat as you. This is my environment and here's what I've done and what I've executed on, and here's the outcomes that I've gotten." It makes it so much easier for them to imagine themselves going, "Okay, so if I deploy this, I can then achieve the same results."

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely. And our CIO is happy to do so. So I haven't added an extra tax on him to have to hire more people to support our organization. And so, it's win-win all around. And again, it's a great story to be able to tell because it's real. It's not just fiction to be able to talk to about with our customers.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, absolutely. Having those blueprints for how to deploy and adopt and the value that you get, I think it's hugely important today. So this has been a great conversation. Really appreciate it. I do want to wrap up though with one final question on what comes next for Freshworks? You're the CCO, the CMO, what do you see coming, what do you want customers to, obviously we talked about what they're going to learn from this, but what should they anticipate going forward?

Mika Yamamoto

>> We're going to continue to lean into simplicity and uncomplicating things for our customers. So what comes next is ongoing innovation that helps them with that to make sure that we're continuing to simplify on their behalf, but continuing to help them by continuing to drive more partnerships with other organizations. So we're going to drive more integrations with other organizations so that we can create more complete solutions, again, that are elegant and simple, that help them deliver value so they don't have to go out and hunt and integrate those elements themselves. So I think that our customers can definitely look forward to that.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, that's great to hear, but it does take an ecosystem-

Mika Yamamoto

>> It absolutely does....

Bob Laliberte

>> to deliver stuff. And I heard the Riverbed solution this morning was an example.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Yes, I love that solution.

Bob Laliberte

>> That looked really great. So looking forward to that. Looking forward to hearing about more ecosystems, looking forward to hearing more innovation coming from Freshworks over the next-

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely. I think another thing that we've heard also is customers asking, "Look, you have some customers that seen this value. What playbook did they use to get there?"

Bob Laliberte

>> Correct.

Mika Yamamoto

>> So we've seen the from and the to, we've heard you describe that they've implemented the technology, but how did they do it and what best practices did they deploy? And so, I think that you can look forward to, I think our customers can look forward to us providing more of that guidance, because I think all of us are trying to figure this out, so we want to be able to put out some of the best practices that others have used, so they can get there faster.

Bob Laliberte

>> Yeah, absolutely. Accelerating that time to value is going to be so hugely important for them, delivering their ROI-

Mika Yamamoto

>> Learn from others.

Bob Laliberte

>> Absolutely.

Mika Yamamoto

>> 100%.

Bob Laliberte

>> Makes a ton of sense. Mika, thank you so much for your time.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Thank you.

Bob Laliberte

>> Really appreciate the conversation.

Mika Yamamoto

>> Absolutely.

Bob Laliberte

>> Absolutely. And I want to thank all of you for watching. Stay tuned for continued coverage of Freshworks Refresh.