Fresha, a beauty and wellness booking system and business management platform was founded in 2015. It now has customers in over 130 countries and operates in 20 markets, providing booking systems, a consumer marketplace and an integrated payments platform.
The company operates across all beauty and wellness businesses, all the way from individuals who work in their homes up to multiple location salons, and many different vertical markets including beauty and hair dressing, pet groomers, fitness studios and health spas.
Elliott Braund, Head of Revenue Operations at Fresha, has been with the company for two and a half years, and was recruited, in part to consolidate its technology operations using HubSpot tech:
I'm in revenue operations, and work with our commercial business, marketing and support teams. The business had invested in HubSpot and wanted to use it moving forwards. I think we've made a lot of leaps and gains with it over the last two-and-a-half years.
When he joined the firm, Fresha was a very de-compartmentalized business from a commercial, marketing and service point of view, he recalls:
It was using Pipedrive for a CRM for the sales team, and also using Zendesk. So the purpose of implementing HubSpot was really to bring all of those under one roof, to make sure that everyone's using the same information to operate, and to break down the silos between departments. I think HubSpot has been brilliant in terms of providing that for us.
The private company operates globally with three main operations. The main one is the booking system, where calendar software sits behind a beauty and wellness business, and helps customers run their day to day operations.
The second is a consumer marketplace, where a marketing tool connects businesses with their existing and new clients. Finally there is the payments operation, which integrates payments within the system, and allows businesses to take payments for the services that it is offering, whether that is online or in store.
The company has its payment system in all of its core markets, and is extending it on a monthly basis to the rest of the 130 countries it operates in. Braund explains:
It's an integrated all in one system for running a beauty and wellness business. For example on the salon side, you obviously get the bookings that come in, and you can send reminders to make sure that people show up. You can take a deposit to make sure that you're not out of pocket if someone decides not to show up. You can run all of your marketing, and all of your payments, seamlessly through the platform.
Like all businesses, Fresha is looking at how best to incorporate AI in its future operations. Braund comments:
I think for us, AI is huge. Every business in the world is trying to understand how they can utilize AI to the best of their ability. From a commercial standpoint, using AI to enrich human interaction, I think, is where the gains are going to be made in the next 18 to 24 months. From a wider business point of view, we constantly look to use AI to streamline the processes that we have.
One example Braund points to is Fresha's use of AI to reduce fraud on its payments system. The company has used machine learning to recognize fraudulent behaviour, or risky activity on a card or payment transaction, and reduced fraud by a whopping 99%.
Over the last couple of months Fresha has also launched an AI powered tool to help its customers build their profiles on its marketplace. He adds:
We're trying to bring AI into the product in a way that makes people more efficient and helps streamline their day to day operation. For operationalization, efficiency, and then ultimately to improve our partner experience with AI. We've just launched the use of AI to help our customers build their profile on our marketplace. It helps our customers build descriptions, and I think what we've seen is people do really enjoy AI. It complements the way in which they work and operate in their day to day lives. Anything we help do to make their businesses more efficient in their day to day operations.
Another example is an AI-powered tool that is able to shorten gaps between calendar events:
For appointments, we've got smart bookings, which essentially compresses the time that they're working to make sure that they are being as efficient as possible every day. Features like that are really driving operational efficiency for our customer base.
Fresha had already begun developing its own proprietary chat bot service last year, before HubSpot's Customer Agent was announced, but it is now looking at HubSpot's Prospecting Agent, says Braund:
I think we really see the value in it, but we want to make sure that we're going to sculpt the agent around our own brand, story, and tone of voice, and make sure that it says the right things at the right time, and that takes a bit of time for us to go through.
In future he believes the hybrid model where the emphasis is on human interaction alongside AI, will be a game changer:
AI is getting smarter and smarter and smarter. The rudimentary ways in which people have used it historically are now starting to be found out. If someone goes to ChatGPT and says, 'Write me an email to this person', it starts to get a bit generic. And you can definitely tell. I think that we're going to start having a premium placed on human interaction within business. HubSpot has designed its AI tool now with Loop to bring in the human element, and use AI as a tool to accompany and enrich human interaction. I think it is what's going to set businesses apart as we move forward.
Although the current world economic situation is uncertain, Braund believes that AI offers companies a way to improve efficiencies and streamline operations:
