Fungru aims to improve the customer feedback system and subsequently the whole customer experience

Fungru is a SaaS-based intelligent customer feedback system. In the 21st era, we’re still using paper-based feedback forms, which are long, boring, not intuitive and doesn't motivate anyone to fill it. Fungru is changing that. Imagine if feedback form of every customer changes based on his previous experience, and profile etc. Started in October 2014 by graduates from IIM Bangalore and IIT, Fungru is all set to change how feedback is taken from customers. Currently with 20+ clients they are all set to expand globally.

In an interaction with YourStory, the Founder-CEO, Nitin Bhadauria, told us about his passion for improving the customer feedback system and experience and how they plan to make a difference in this space.

YS: What is Fungru all about? 

NB: Existing paper-based feedback forms are boring, not intuitive; customers don’t have any incentive to fill the forms. It has just become one of the necessary processes in any company to complete it for the sake of it, even though it is imperfect. Now with the advent of social media reviews site like Mouthshut, Trip AdvisorsorZomato, brand owners are afraid of bad reputation. They know that reviews are impacting their customer revenue. So, now,they’re having second look at existing feedback systems. They want a feedback system, which can give actionable insights in real time before any customer resorts to online bashing of brand.

Fungru is a SaaS-based intelligent customer feedback system for physical store or, in short, “USERVOICE for offline market.” (hospitals, hotels, retails,& etc)

Implementation of Fungru involves 3 steps:

a) Definition of feedback forms: Using our DIY form builder, clients can create feedback forms in two minutes. They can create the forms for different touch points.

b) Collect the feedback: Clients can use our tablet/mobile/email app to collect the feedback from customers during the check out or while they are in the store.

c) Act on dissatisfied customers: Using our action module, every dissatisfied customer is assigned a employee for follow up. Employee role is to understand reasons for customer unhappiness and coordinate internally with team to get it resolved.

d) Customer analytics: Our analytics automatically churn out relevant customer-centric metrics to communicate relevant information to department heads, & etc.

In short, you can say it’s a combination of Survey Gizmo + Freshdesk + analytics engine packaged in one at fraction of cost targeting the offline market.

YS: Tell us about your backgrounds and the journey to start Fungru.

NB: We are two co-founders along with four full time colleagues.

Nitin Bhadauria(CEO): Nitin is an MBA graduate from IIM Bangalore. After passing out from IIM, he rejected the placement offer and instead started business performance management company Alitum Solution along with two other IIMB colleagues.

Niteesh Kumar(CTO): Niteesh is a CS graduate from IIT Guwahati. He has two-year work experience in Directi. He loves coding and has won numerous hackathalons.

The idea of Fungru popped up when founders were sitting in a restaurant started by a friend. They were not happy with the service time, wanted to complaint and asked for afeedback form. At first, employees didn’t bother to give them forms.After insistence, when they did, they were not too keen to listen to our issues. Considering that we knew how customer-centric our friend is, it was hurting us that an employee’s bias can lead to communication gap between customers and brand owners. We knew existing paper feedback forms or complete dependencies on employees have to go.

YS: Your views about the customer feedback system market? 

NB: Globally, the customer experience market is USD 3.5 billion, and is expected to reach USD8.5 billion by 2017.

YS: What are your team size, expertise and source of funding?

NB: We are seven guys. Three of us handle sales and operation, and the rest are into product development.

As far as funding is concerned, we got our initial funds from Rahshekhar (Vasan Eye Care) and IIM Professor, Vasanti ma’am. We’re on the lookout for seed funding.

YS: What is your target audience and marketing strategy?

NB: We’re targeting global offline markets (hospitals, hotels, retails, financial services,& etc). Considering that it’s a tough ask to sell to these segments- as adaptation is slow with long sales cycle -we’re using innovative marketing strategies to sell. We’re using acombination of strategic partnerships, cross-sector marketing and inbound techniques to scale the business.

YS: Who are your competitors, if any? How does Fungru standout?

NB: Existing paper-based feedback system is the biggest competitor. However, as explained above, Fungru’s comprehensive real time system is way more valuable than the existing system.

USP of our system: Fungru has intelligent feedback feature by which questions asked to customer changes based on customer profile. For example, a loyal customer is asked different questions than a first timer. Similarly, previously dissatisfied customers need different treatment than a happy one. This features helps Fungru in getting 40 per cent more feedback and 35 per cent more engaged feedback from customers as it presentsa customer-centric image of brand.

Globally,the customer experience management space is dominated by big enterprise players like Medallia or Responsetek in the US. However, none of them are pure SaaS-based players targeting SME clients like Fungru does.

Our intelligent questionnaire module is an innovation in this field, which we’re evolving as we grow. We have more than five lakh customers’ data with us growing at 10 per centmom . We also have 30+ clients, including the likes of Cloudnine, Prestige, Embassy group, MGM group,& etc.

YS: What are your future plans to expand?

NB: We’re the biggest vendor in the hospital space for patient feedback. After proving the concept in this sector, we’re looking to expand across sectors and across geography. We will be able to do that due to our SaaS-based ‘Do itYourself’ system making the implementation and selling easier.

Check out http://www.fungru.com/ for more details.