How Freshworks built a customer-led growth engine in 90 days
Kevin Lau transformed Freshworks' fragmented customer initiatives into a scalable, lifecycle-driven engagement engine in 90 days. Centered on six strategic pillars, his approach embedded advocacy, education, and community across the customer journey. With support from Captivate Collective, Kevin reframed customer advocacy and marketing at Freshworks, driving rapid growth and internal alignment, underscoring the shift from transactional engagement to customer-powered growth.
- Unified Strategy: Kevin created a connected system that spans the entire customer lifecycle, emphasizing education, community, and advocacy.
- Rapid Impact: A 90-day plan, anchored by an audit and partnership with Captivate, led to scalable, strategic programs.
- Freshworks Insiders Program: Relaunched to great success, attracting 1,000+ members and energizing broader customer engagement.
- Trendsetting Vision: Kevin reframed customer marketing as a revenue-driving function, not a support role.
- Customer-Centric Focus: His approach prioritizes listening to customers and co-creating value through programs that matter to them.
Our Trendsetter:
Kevin Lau, VP of Customer Engagement at Freshworks
About Kevin:
Kevin Lau is a customer marketing and advocacy expert with 14+ years of experience leading and executing customer-led growth initiatives across various industries and markets. He is currently the Vice President of Customer Engagement at Freshworks, a provider of enterprise-grade service software without the complexity, helping to deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences.
“Customer advocacy is an unlocked growth opportunity, and many companies are missing it.” — Kevin Lau, VP of Customer Engagement at Freshworks
The trendsetting vision: Build a connected, customer-forward strategy
When it comes to making statements and setting trends in the field of customer advocacy, there's no need to look any further than Kevin Lau, VP of Customer Engagement at Freshworks.
Kevin is redefining how B2B companies think about the post-sale experience. With a future-forward mindset and a drive to innovate, he’s elevating customer marketing into both a business-critical function and a powerful lever for growth. A household name in B2B advocacy, Kevin has made waves through his innovative customer programs at Marketo, Adobe, F5, and his latest activity: developing a extensive customer engagement function at Freshworks any customer marketer would envy.
Kevin sees customer marketing not as a series of disconnected initiatives, but as a unified system — one that drives value at every stage of the customer journey, boosts loyalty and growth, and has a lasting competitive advantage.
“Since 2020 customer marketing has evolved its scope,” he said. “Post-sales is seen as much more of a revenue driver. If you want to stay competitive, you have to engage customers across their entire lifecycle. It’s one of the last true differentiators in an ever-widening sea of competitors.”
When Kevin stepped into his role at Freshworks, he saw an opportunity to build a connected, customer-first strategy from the ground up. His vision was to create a trendsetting customer programs portfolio that rose above the ordinary.
“My vision was to create a best-in-class customer engagement practice,” he said. “Back then, our programs were transactional. We asked customers to do things without deepening the relationship. Within 90 days, I wanted to create more clarity for internal teams and customers, and establish scalable programs that spanned the full customer lifecycle.”
Kevin anchored his vision in six foundational pillars:
- Community building
- Advocacy
- Education
- Voice of the Customer (VoC)
- Scaled communications
- Lifecycle and retention
“I wanted to create a more cross-functional engine that supported customers from adoption to loyalty, with education, community, and value, while creating more raving fans.”
💡 Trendsetter Tip: Staying competitive requires marketers to seize opportunities to engage the customer across the entire post-sale experience.
How they did it: An audit, a reorganization, and a new initiative
Kevin came in with a plan - and a trusted partner - to drive immediate impact.
“Captivate Collective is part of my 90-day playbook anytime I’m revamping a customer engagement strategy and team,” he said. “I trust their judgment, I trust their expertise, and I trust their team to deliver fast.”
The first order of business was an in-depth audit of Freshworks’ customer programs. Captivate mapped the entire landscape, spotting overlaps, gaps, and areas for quick wins. Within a couple of weeks, Captivate helped the team rethink their portfolio to drive the right impact for customers.
“We had 15–20 initiatives running, and it was a lot for our customers to consume,” said Kevin. “The big shift was making our portfolio much more strategic in how we engaged the customer across their lifecycle. Programs were repositioned to drive clarity and value, from onboarding to community forums to training and certification,” said Kevin.
Freshworks continues to refine program alignment, making it easier for customers to access, engage with, and understand the value of each initiative. They’re also developing a global brand framework for customer programs, including naming conventions and visual identity, to help customers and internal teams navigate the ecosystem easily.
One of the standout wins was relaunching a new global customer advocacy initiative, the Freshworks Insiders Program. Members gain exclusive opportunities to share insights and make a meaningful impact within the Freshworks community. The launch attracted over 1,000 sign-ups right out of the gate, followed by a ripple effect, with customers engaging more broadly across all programs.
The trendsetting moves continue: As the Freshworks strategy matures and evolves, the customer remains front and center in everything Kevin does.
“Start with the customer and truly hear them. Learn from them, create the initiatives they care about, and tailor your programs based on those experiences,” Kevin said.
Kevin’s next steps include finalizing their global customer brand — a way to create cohesion across their customer engagement options — and launching an awards program to recognize and reward top-performing customers. They continue to collaborate with Captivate on both projects.
💡 Trendsetter Tip: Successful innovation in customer advocacy requires listening to the customer and positioning them first by creating initiatives they care about.
The impact: scalable, impactful advocacy
Today, Freshworks is becoming a model of maturity and innovation in B2B customer marketing. Their approach is connected, strategic, and scalable, embedding engagement across the entire customer journey and creating a true Lifecycle Advocacy program. To manage their growing success, Freshworks has doubled its customer marketing team from 15 to 30+ globally.
The Insiders Program alone has become a cornerstone of the company’s customer advocacy efforts, generating rapid sign-ups and boosting engagement across other initiatives. What started as one program quickly became a catalyst for deeper advocacy and education — and tapping into Captivate’s ready-made frameworks and experience saved Kevin’s team months of strategic planning and helped them avoid pitfalls.
“Our work with Captivate has helped FreshWorks differentiate itself in a sea of sameness,” Kevin said. “Captivate helped us hit the ground running and execute against the goals quickly.”
The message is clear: There’s untapped power in customer marketing, and the time to invest is now.
“Customer advocacy is an unlocked opportunity that most companies still don’t see the full potential with,” he said. “The customer marketing teams that will be successful are those who support their customers early and often. Giving them a clear roadmap for how they can engage with you helps build their brand, build your company’s reputation, and ultimately shows value to both parties.”
💡 Trendsetter Tip: Stand out in a sea of sameness by supporting customers early and often. Provide a clear roadmap for engagement to build brand awareness, build the company's reputation, and ultimately show value to both parties.
Hear more from Kevin:
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The need for advocacy trendsetters
trend-setter: one that sets a trend: someone or something that starts or helps to popularize a new fashion, style, movement, etc.
At Captivate, our mission is to not just keep pace with customer advocacy trends, but to lead them. Our most innovative customers forge new mindsets, build unique programs, and implement processes that drive customer loyalty and collaboration to a whole new level. They are, in fact, customer advocacy trendsetters. And it is our hope that by sharing their stories, we will continue to grow the visibility, buy-in and impact not only of the CMA practice, but of the customer-powered enterprise.
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