Freshworks CRM rollout & implementation at Kasha Global, Inc

In Detail

1) Business Problem  with Context: Kasha Global had just expanded from Rwanda into Kenya and was preparing to scale into South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Customer volumes grew exponentially, but the internal support infrastructure did not.

Customer support operations were fragmented across WhatsApp, Email, Phone calls through on-prem E1 lines, Meta Business Suite (Facebook/Instagram DMs), A legacy order management setup on Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, and E-commerce websites lacking centralized customer interaction tracking

Pain points were critical and growing fast:

• No unified customer view led to inconsistent support quality

• No ticket tracking led to unresolved issues, repeated problems

• No SLA compliance led to high customer churn risk

• Support teams could not scale with market growth

• Telcos delayed SIP provisioning, causing long response times

• Customer experience degraded at the exact time the company needed to look attractive to investors

Urgency: Leadership needed a CRM capable of multi-country scaling, seamless integration with existing systems, and the ability to provide a consistent, premium customer experience to support aggressive expansion plans.

2) Objective / Success Criteria

Primary Objective: Deploy a unified Omni-channel CRM across all active and upcoming markets to standardize customer engagement, scale support operations, and improve service quality.

Success Criteria:

• Centralization of all customer interactions into one unified platform

• Seamless integration with SIP lines, Meta Business Suite, Freshdesk, FreshSales, FreshChat, website, and Dynamics Business Central

• Reduced average resolution times and improved SLA adherence

• Improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores by ≥30% within first 6 months

• Enable “plug-and-play” country expansion with zero rebuild of support operations

• Provide real-time visibility for executives into customer operations and trends

3) My Role & Ownership

As the Regional IT Manager (Rwanda, Kenya, and SouthAfrica), I led the project end-to-end:

• Requirements gathering across Rwanda, Kenya, and global remote teams

• Vendor sourcing, evaluation, and selection

• Contract negotiation & scope definition

• Full vendor and stakeholder management

• System configuration oversight

• Integration design and technical coordination

• Training (Train-the-Trainer model)

• Rollout planning, execution, monitoring

• Ensuring adoption and continuous optimization

• I was accountable for delivery, timelines, quality, and operational readiness.

4) What I Did

• Conducted deep-dive assessments of current service workflows and volumes in Rwanda and Kenya

• Created a requirements matrix for an Omni-channel CRM capable of:

  • Multi-country scalability

  • Multi-channel intake (email, voice, chat, social media)

  • Full ticket lifecycle management

  • Seamless integration via APIs

  • Real-time reporting and customer journey visibility

  • Evaluated multiple CRM vendors and selected Freshworks for its modular and scalable ecosystem

  • Negotiated contracts and SLAs with Freshworks

• Designed the integration architecture between:

  • Freshdesk

  • Freshchat (+ AI chatbot)

  • Freshcaller

  • Meta Business Suite

  • SIP providers (MTN, Airtel, Safaricom)

  • E-commerce websites

  • Microsoft Dynamics Business Central

• Coordinated provisioning of SIP lines across Rwanda and Kenya

  • Led configuration of ticket categories, workflows, automations, SLAs, escalation rules

  • Trained support teams through structured onboarding, documentation, and live simulations

  • Designed a phased rollout to ensure stability across both markets

  • Transitioned support operations fully onto Freshworks

5) Technical Depth

• Core Components Implemented:

  • Freshdesk for Multi-channel ticketing + automations

  • Freshchat + AI Chatbot for Website chat, prescription uploads, guided support

  • Freshcaller for Cloud-based call center replacing unreliable SIP on-prem

  • Freshsales to For sales pipelines, customer lifecycle tracking

• Key Integrations:

  • Microsoft Dynamics Business Central for order lookup and inventory updates

  • Meta Business Suite for social media campaigns and advertizing

  • USSD module for customer ordering and payments

  • Payment gateways for transaction-related queries

  • Custom APIs enabling data flow between e-commerce website and CRM

• Infrastructure Upgrades:

  • Full migration to cloud voice channels

  • SIP re-routing and provisioning with MTN, Airtel, Safaricom

  • Automated SLAs, workflows, escalations, and ticket routing

6) Results & Impact (Before vs. After)

Before:

• Fragmented customer communication across multiple platforms

• Long response times and lost tickets

• No single source of truth for customer support

• Difficult to measure performance or improve support SLAs

• Scaling into new countries required rebuilding support ops from scratch

After:

• Reduction in lost/forgotten customer issues

• Significant improvement in SLA adherence across Rwanda and Kenya

• >30% improvement in CSAT within 6 months

• Seamless cross-market visibility for executives

• Standardized processes that allowed Kasha to scale markets without operational chaos

• Stronger investor confidence due to operational maturity

• Support teams handled 3 - 4x more volume without increased staffing

• Freshworks became a foundational pillar in Kasha’s scaling strategy.

7) Challenges & How I Solved Them

• Major Challenge 1: Telco Delays (SIP Provisioning). MTN Rwanda & Airtel Kenya delayed configurations, causing ~4 months of overruns. I overcame this by escalating to senior telco leadership, weekly meetings to monitor progress, and parallel workstreams to avoid blocking.

• Major Challenge 2: Resistance to change. Support teams were accustomed to WhatsApp/email workflows. I approached this through a Train-the-trainer model, early demos and buy-in meetings, and Incentivized adoption through performance dashboards

• Major Challenge 3: Multi-country alignment. Different teams had different workflows and expectations. I approached this through standardized workflows & SLAs, created country-specific customizations where necessary, and established regional governance

8) What I’d Do Differently Next Time

• Conduct earlier Telco alignment before the main rollout

• Begin change management 4 to 6 weeks earlier

• Reduce customization to speed up deployment

• Build a more robust internal knowledge base from day one